*If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them:'Hold on!'
Rudyard Kipling *
Some did but a lot did not. We might be a fractious bunch of people but we were all affected by the gory sights the sheer misery and pain written on many a people's face on that fateful December day.
The worst affected were those who survived the disaster only to find out a wife, a brother, a sister a friend, a mother, a father, an entire family, an entire village, an entire tribe of people lost in the Andaman?s because of a massive quake movement far out in the sea off Jakarta.
While CNN shows the 27 leaders trying to gather in Jakarta and then deliver the aid which is much required, goaded on by the UN our own TV channels, and some channels like the BBC who still believe in reporting what their own correspondents saw and had experienced rather then interview people who stood on top of a roof in Phuket and filmed the waves hitting the shore and of water rising 4 feet and then huge money selling the tapes it was sickening for me to watch.
What about the people of Acheh, Sri Lanka, and our own worst affected regions, well the media in the US is too controlled to show the horror of hundreds of dead lying about being buried in mass graves, the last time the American Public saw such naked truth the whole country was up in arms about it, but now they are held on the leash by their fool of a president who suddenly jumps from$35, million in Aid to 350M$ and then sends his brother Jeb and a soon to retiring thus rendered ineffective Secretary of State Colin Powell to show the world that America too has faced such calamities in the form of hurricanes, maybe true in terms of material damage but not in what makes a country an entity? It?s people.
The noblest gesture came from Europe, the 3-minute silence held and shown live all across parts of the UK, Sweden, Holland was touching. Then came the millions of Euros the people of Europe donated and made sure was available to the survivors ASAP.
On a more personal level my factory and the staff have donated over Rs 75, 000 some workers willingly taking a pay cut of 3 days for the next 6 months to come.
My brother in Dubai did the same as his office had 7 people whose families lived in that area itself and couldn't trace them for some time and not every family came out unaffected.
A friend of mine visiting the Andaman?s Diego, hailing from PORTO in Portugal was one of the lucky ones as only three people who managed to hold on to their lives by hanging onto some coconut tree survived the ordeal out of the 15 initial hanger on.
As soon as communications were restored he refused point blank to go back home which he said he couldn't do till he was sure that by being in the Andaman?s their was something he could do to help the survivors and make sure his survival helped many more people who lay strewn along the coast or were bought sweeping back in with the tide didn't suffer the indignity of being just a figure but helped hand craft litters for the bodies and cover them with cloth before some camera totting guy came gallivanting in with a TV camera in tow.
From point to point in our history we have learned of natural disasters making a huge impact on the people as a whole, this tragedy is on par with 9/11 if not worst, they may not have been rich put they were people who suffered just like when the Town of Pompeii was overwhelmed by a scathing burst of liquid lava and ash is a mere 4 minutes. Leaving a perfectly preserved town behind which just ECHO' THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE' and had Pink Floyd do one of their best and most humane concert of all time with the Band laying to the empty AMPHITHEATERin Pompeii.
{A very poignant but eerie apt song considering the circumstances}.
*'Echoes'
Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves in labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant tide
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine
And no one showed us to the land
And no one knows the where?s or why?s
But something stirs and
Something tries
And starts to climb towards the light
Strangers passing in the street
By chance two separate glances meet
And I am you and what I see is me
And do I take you by the hand
And lead you through the land
And help me understand the best I can
And no one calls us to the land
And no one forces down our eyes
And no one speaks
And no one tries
And no one flies around the sun
Cloudless every day you fall
Upon my waking eyes
Inviting and inciting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Comes streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning
And no one sings me lullabies
And no one makes me close my eyes
So I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky.*
