TSUNAMI

Tsunami- a totally alien word in our list of natural disasters! Yet it came. It conquered. It left. What was it? An earthquake? A tidal wave? A flood? For us laymen, who cannot grasp the graphic detailing of environmental catastrophes, it was simply a unique combination of all three. A powerful tremor that disturbed the peaceful bed of the sea causing it to rise immensely, thus submerging the shores. According to the meteorological analysts, the period from the first tremor, to the rising, to the finale could very well have taken nothing less than three hours. Was hundred and eighty minutes or more, so constricted a time that a forewarning of any sort that could have saved the lives of thousands, was in no way possible? In this age of technology and expertise, I somehow find it hard to believe.

It is said that it is a near impossible task to predict a Tsunami. Yet there was a very interesting news item in the Indian Express, which stated that the Director of America’s Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had got information about the Tsunami, four to five hours before it hit the Indian Coast. So why the silent treatment? Because ‘he could not find any Indian addresses’. A pretty limited address book he owns, I must say. The article also goes on to say that our very own meteorological pundits knew of the killer waves coming but were too busy calculating the epicenter of the earthquake. And when they finally got their vital data they sent it to Murli Manohar Joshi. Why him? Because he was their Science Minister… once upon a time! Sounds like a pathetic fairy tale with a tragic ending. What else can I say but totally agree with TJS George (the writer) when he goes on to say that ‘such civil servants deserve to be sunk in the Tsunami’.

A week after the disaster, a few remarkable news items began to emerge. One was in the ‘Hindu’ about a ten- year old British schoolgirl, Tilly, who was holidaying with her parents in Phuket. This ‘Angel of the Beach’ (as she was later nicknamed) saved the lives of hundreds of people, by warning them that after an earthquake in the seashore, chances were that ‘a wall of water’ was about to strike. It seems she had learnt about Tsunamis in her geography class. Her intuition was enough to raise the alert and prompt the evacuation of Phuket’s Maiko beach and a neighbouring hotel before the ‘wall’ came crashing in.

Similarly, a group of Junior dockyards (since no Captains were present), managed to steer 70 of the 74 ships into the sea in one of the nearby islands, thus saving crores of rupees, just because one of their colleagues, Sameer Kohli, who had learnt about Tsunamis in his training period in 1983, warned them of what was about to happen. Another little village near Pondicherry escaped, thanks to a timely warning call from Singapore. Vijay Kumar, a member of the M.S.Swaminathan Research team, called up his friends in the fishing village of Veerapattinam, warning them of the giant tidal wave that had already struck the Indonesian coasts. Immediately the villagers were put on vigil. As a result this village had no deaths while its neighbours suffered huge losses.

These intuitive tales of amazing valour and instinctive reaction, reminded me of a distinct episode that occurred when we were posted in Guwahati. One morning Champagne, my dog (just eight months old) suddenly started acting very strange. Seeming very agitated he started whining and began running about the entire house as if surrounded by a swarm of bees. Just as I was wondering what had gone wrong the sudden cries of nervous crows outside rang out through the entire atmosphere. Exactly three minutes later there was an earthquake.

Interestingly enough, although the statistics of human lives continue to be on the rising, there are not many animals that perished in the Tsunami disaster. It could be that unlike Man, they sensed the predictable danger and leaving their natural habitat, flew, ran or crawled away. It is a known fact that most of the birds and animals not only use infrasound to communicate with each other but can also sense the changes in temperatures, magnetic fields and even traces of chemicals in the air. Pity that these valuable and powerful harbingers of nature are powerless in terms of speech.

Which takes us to the final analysis. Makes more sense to employ the likes of Tillys, Kohlis and Kumars and to rely on their limited but judicious wisdom. Makes more sense to install the winged and the four- legged creatures and monitor their behavioral changes instead. It certainly makes more sense than to put all our faith on some pompous men and their manmade astronomically priced meteorological contraptions. For sometimes, a modest prediction carries more weight than a portentous declaration.

Tsunami- not such an alien word anymore. The dawning of a Black Sunday proved it otherwise. It is in fact the familiar face of humble Nature that sometimes mirrors wrath. It is the dim surface of modest divinity that often reflects the nothingness of mortals. It is a constant reminder to a self proclaimed, self- important intelligent species. That in his quest for distinction, Man should not be heading for extinction.

Nargis Natarajan.