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11 countries affected by the Tsunami
- 150,000 victims mourned
- 1.8 million people in need of food
- 2 Billion USD promised as aid
These are the figures that the media is throwing at our face ... We're all numb
at the magnitude of the tragedy ... It's not always that we see so many zeroes
at the end of a casualty list ...
We talk about what could have been done to warn people ... About who is giving
how much ... About the effectiveness of the relief efforts ... About the
benefit concert being performed ... or cricket match being played ... About the
origins of the word Tsunami ...
And we don't just talk ... We donate a part of out earnings to a relief fund.
Our conscience thus appeased, we forget about the tragedy and carry on with our
daily lives - Going out for movies, dinners and even celebrating the New Year
with undiluted noise and pomp ...
How many of us have bothered to look beyond the numbers? ... At the pain and
suffereing that people have actually undergone? ... The numbers given by the
papers mislead us all ... And I'm not just talking about accounting for missing
people ...
An estimated one third of those killed in this tragedy were children ... When
even a single child dies, it's not just the parents and relations who are affected
... The pain is felt by many more people ... The child's close friends, their
parents, classmates, school teachers and more or less all members of the
community ... They all share the grief ... Hundreds mourn for a single little
flower taken before its time ... Now take the agony of all these people and
multiply it by a hundred and fifty thousand ... THAT would be a closer figure
of those affected by the disaster ...
90% of the people killed in India were fisherman, sole bread-earners for their
large families ... Go and tell their orphaned children and their aging parents
that they are not counted as the "victims" of the tragedy ...
Millions of others in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand lost their homes,
shops, boats and only means of earning their livelihood ... Everything that was
familiar to them vanishes in a few hours ... Refugees in their own countries,
with nowhere to go ... Are they any less affected than those who lost a loved
one? ... Numbers are indeed misleading ...
Among the many tales of grief and heroism that are emerging in the papers,
there was one which touched me ...
A mother in Thailand was caught in the swirling waters and held onto her two
little sons ... One was aged five and the other two ... She knew that they
could not survive if she held onto both of them ... She had to choose between
her sons ... Ultimately she chose to let the elder one adrift, and held onto
the younger one ... Luckily the elder boy survived , and was found two hours
later ...
But just think of what could have been going on in the mother's mind when she
was forced to choose ... The decision to give your own flesh and blood up
willingly is a painful one ... Even more painful for her would be facing her
elder son and living with the fact that he knows she left him to die ...
A policeman in South India was approached by a couple for help ... Their son
had been missing for days ... They were not ready to accept the inevitable, and
were hopeful of finding him ... The policeman later told the media, "How can
you tell a parent to give up hope?" ...
Indeed ... How can you tell a mother that she'll never cook her son's favourite
dish for him again? ... How can you tell a father that he'll never attend his
daughter's marraige? ... How can parents be asked to bury their own child? ...
What fate could be more cruel? ...
Individual stories like these bring out a true picture of the magnitude of the
disaster ... Huge numbers merely trivialise the value of individual lives ...
As a tourist in Phuket put it ...
"I would like express my
extreme sorrow for all affected. I arrived on Phuket three days ago and am
impressed to see how the island has recovered. Isn't it time to show some good
news? Phuket is a miracle island with only a few hundred casualties, not to be
confused with other locations on the mainland who were less fortunate. Phuket's
infrastructure is 100% intact. The best way of helping the local people is by
spreading the good news instead of repeatedly showing week-old video
clips."
Only a
few hundred casualties? ... Good
news? ... How can you use the word "only"
when you're talking about human lives? ... Even a single life taken is one too
many ...
The Tsunami has been a disaster of enormous magnitude ... But the bigger
disaster lies in the fact that humanity has become desensitized to the horrors
of the loss of life ... When a tragedy is reduced to an opportunity for news
channels to improve their ratings ... When gory pictures of death and
destruction simply make interesting forwards ... When US Congressman view the
disaster as an "opportunity" to show the Muslim world they care ...
And when human life is just reduced to numbers on a piece of paper ...
-
ROSHAN SHANKER