What The Thunder Said
The Tsunami struck South and South-East Asians; and after 120 days, that too in a poor country with billion plus population, milliards of tribulation, anguishes and aches of the daily struggle of niggardly survival in this cruel world, it is just a yet another 'natural' disaster to be recorded in the cold pages of annals of history. But on the daybreak after the Christmas, perhaps Nature did try to tell us, the poor humankind, something - something very essential, which, 'those who hath ears, let them hear' -borrowing from a well-known parable.
When the water started to gush and spread up from fathoms deep down below, with the power perhaps much more than all the nuclear powered fleets of the US Marines possess, the US Naval HQ of the Pacific could sense that with their multi billion dollar worth scientific instruments in their war labs scattered throughout the world, and duly and hastily warned their Naval Base Station in the Diego Garcia island in the Indian ocean. They have billions of dollars worth of human made destructive power amassed in that island, so that must be saved with proper warning call. But they didn't bother to raise alarm in the South & Southeast Asian coasts, to those countries, to those governments, which would be hit by the Tsunami within half an hour or a couple of hour thence. Because those are not customers of US Naval warning system data, neither are they clientele of any other sophisticated meteorological advance warning systems, and because those billions of poor Asians don't worth anything to them. Rather such catastrophes give them good chances of experimenting things - ? perhaps to study effects and design future disaster management schemes for coastal USA; ? after all, their glorious NY, CA, LA,etc are all there to be saved at any cost; to show generosity of the mighty US of A announcing plenty of aids; ? perhaps to raise awareness among the Asian rulers for buying US made (worse, but not worst,if Euro or Jap made) early warning machines and systems and super-computers... ? and certainly reconstructions will be a good business for foreign capital and their 'native' partners alike; ? and aid distribution is a good business too, where lots of blessed 'NGO's will naturally be involved and will get service works and 'cost' of those too; ? perhaps for other so many reasons known or unknown... . So friends, this is Imperialism, at large! And this is capitalism, got to mind your business , always! Government is no charity, neither is science. Weep you poor ancient civilisations - you never were clever enough to declare a 10000 years' IPR (product patent) on wheel, pencil & paper, agriculture, animal-domestication, or 'zero', formal logic, theory of buoyancy, or Euclid's Theorems, calendar systems... [Thanks should go to Bill Gates of Microsoft; the Office2000 pack's word processor has © and ® printable symbols in its " Euclid " Font too.]
The govt of India and all the established political parties shred gallons of tears for the victim of the so gigantic a 'natural' disaster: only pray to or put blame on the 'Nature', and/or the God(s)-in- Charge; its so simple to show sympathy to the poor, backward ignorant creatures of these parts of the third world! ? None of the victims will ask those administrators that why didn't they warn the dwellers of south-east Indian coast where the fury of the water god reached an hour and half after it struck the Andaman and Nicober Islands; whereas, just a cell phone call from a relative staying abroad in Indonesia gave enough time for a few dozens inhabitants of a small village in TN coast to save themselves! ? Nobody will ask the govt., which spends billions of $ every year for its destruction wing, the 'defence', as to why the same govt could not spend a small fraction of the sum to become a customer of Tsunami Advanced Warning Services. [What a humane name for inhuman business with human knowledge developed through thousands of years' of civilisation - " Services "!!] ? Or why the govt did not try to build its own advanced, sophisticated meteorological system cutting just a quarter of the sum it spends annually for non-productive and non-constructive expenditures, like billions of $ on the 'army'.
? In the USA, they cannot stop a tsunami yet, mighty USA don't have that 'power' yet to do so; but by their disaster management systems they can easily stop the death toll to climb to such horrible 4,5 or 6 digit figures; why then the govt of India cannot do the same, why cannot they endeavour to save the life of those poor hundred of thousands. ? it is yet not obligatory in eastern or north-eastern India to take into account the well known seismic factors while designing even multi-storeyed buildings; its all too casual and liberal here. ? 'rumours' are also there that they got 'time' to shut down totally the nuclear power plant in coastal TN (perhaps without knowing why), but nobody had 'time' or 'advance info' to warn the fishermen families staying in clay houses; even scores died in that well-built Nuclear Plant township (!); this is India - a country whose prodigious proud president and his fellow scientists are lunatically dreaming of an Indian Lunar Expedition in near future.
[But why blame the G.O.I. only! ? 40 percent of the world's best brains in science and technology, in which a good portion is Indian, are directly and indirectly working for war-related researches; and sadly, there is perhaps not even one well-equipped meteorologist per 100 X 100 sq. kilometres of the world's surface, with all of them set to act concertedly; so small is mankind's endeavour to study Nature!] ? Rather blame, if you need to blame somebody, those ignorant fishermen folk, why don't they live in someplace a mile or two from the sea coast; why don't they live in well built concrete houses; they have suffered many times and still they will take no lessons!!!
It is always easy to take and label such things as 'natural' in these poor backward countries. Flood, huge rainfall or draught, hailstorms, typhoons or snake bites, cholera, malaria or plague, everything is so n-a-t-u-r-a-l here; every such thing is some angered god's/goddess's action; and the poor and humble millions are destined to suffer and die every year - that's n-a-t-u-r-a-l too. And luckily they have the benevolent leaders of parties and panchayat raaj, ministers, M.L.A.s, MPs, sarkaari-sahibs of the upper raaj, the 'saviour' army men in actions (forget what happened in Manipur!) - all can be seen throughout the country with the ultramodern TV-Cable-Satellite network! And the established parties get some good work, aid collection, good interaction with their mass-voter-base, good chance of showing their magnanimity to the victims; so let there be such n-a-t-u-r-a-l disasters, if possible, every year. Also lucky are all those mentioned ones, how easily they can portray themselves as benevolent aid givers. And blessed contractors and sahibs and the entire etcetera upar-waalon pray for such natural disasters every year because they give chances to get richer quickly. Relief pour in and trickle down through this layer making these intermediaries thicker tummy-ed every year. Let the poor become paupers and paltry-aid-beggars, they are already so, or so they will become anyway, this way or other; and then let the top brass become their saviours and generous distributors-deliverers. These are also n a t u r a l , isn't it? This is backyard-Asia's or India's eternal cycle of life; this is F A T E ; and poor Indians take it easy,
e a s y ; and n a t u r a l l y, since no alternative exists as it is.
Soon after the Tsunami there started a race, a contest of advertisement of generosity, the big-benefactor competition among the so-called donor-countries. Figures with so many zeros filled up the newspapers. Even individual donors rushed to see their names published in the press with due gratitude. Multimillionaire cricket boys rushed their 'aids' to their poor victim-fans, there were front-page coverage with photos of course, matches were organised to raise 'charity' money! Patronages, chivalrous and heroic, cascaded down, most, of course were announcements. Only the faultfinders grudged, "Just an year back those people promised aid totalling 1100 million US $ for the Iranian earthquake; but in actuality, only 1.6% , i.e., $17.6 million reached there; and the sum actually dripped down to the bottom was still less". Let those 'rumour-mongers' say anything they like - those wretched few, who are so heartless as to talk nasty politics at a time when the task is to save and feed the devastated fellows. The man at the bottom cannot calculate, s/he gets some meagre aid, but the booming figures serve their purpose; who is going to see what reaches where and when. This time foreign rescue workers came, and also naturally they were morally duty bound to find first and rescue their own fellow countrymen, the tourists who came for sunny baths and luxurious holidaying from far away affluent countries. The US Marines also got a chance of making their presence felt directly on some affected places masquerading as relief-cum-rescue missions!
Nobody will protest - no politicking please at this crucial time of relief missions . The financially big and fat divine religious organisations, including the RSS also always jump at conducting relief operations every time some n a t u r a l disaster strikes India; they are always there to aid the people, they have their seva-dharma ; they are kind-hearted ones; they never do politics at such critical times. They even adopt many children who have lost all their kinfolk; and the morally- duty-bound and god-fearing citizens, even not so rich people reach out with donations to these religious organisations as much as they can! These orphans will grow up inheriting average Indian belief system of those donors and their magnanimous rescuers. This is also a part of the belief's eternal cycle in these poor countries - don't talk about nasty politics at the time of natural calamities , the task at such time is of saving life only. So all the lines written above in this piece, all such nasty politics have the destiny to be cursed to go to garbage-heaps as quickly as possible. Think of relief measures, think of relief measures at first, think of only relief measures... politics may wait, politics may go to hell.
But through the gnashing of the tectonic plates and bashing of massive seabed, through the gushing, rushing water and crushing colossal waves, the gusting thrusting Tsunami sent by the Nature tried to tell us, S...S...S... — Sanhaarayoh, Samulambinaashayoh, Sansreeza — Destroy - the rule that let the people get crushed, Uproot - the system that is brutal, Create - a new humane society. The nature evoked a battle cry — a?laan-?-jang - 'those who hath ears, let them hear' .
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