Tuesday 30 December 2014

Remembering 2004 Asian Tsunami

A lot was written and many photographs and videos circulated in the social media marking the tenth anniversary (Dec 26) of the devastating Asian tsunami. It caught many countries, including India, totally unawares and for most victims their lives got snuffed away in a matter of seconds and that too when they were least expecting it.
 

Those days I used to stay in Chennai and on that fateful day a couple of hours before the tsunami, the city was rocked by tremors. I was home alone, with family gone for Christmas vacation, and happened to be having my morning cuppa.

Suddenly I felt I was going down and then coming up as if in a swing. It happened twice and I thought 'It's high time I went for a health check up'. Just then I heard a commotion outside and realised that all my flat mates were rushing downstairs with some yelling 'earthquake'. I then realised the 'swing' sensation was not something personal.
 

I too locked my flat and rushed outside after taking my two prized possessions - house keys and mobile phone. Outside the parked cars were shaking faintly in the after effect of the tremors. All the people in my locality had spilled down on to the street with some senior citizens being assisted by their younger dependents to climb down stairs.
 

Our lane was an assortment of 3-4 storey apartments and two storeyed houses with structures built in close proximity, after overcoming various building laws. I was fearing if an earthquake actually occurs these structures may suffer a bicycle-stand collapse with debris falling off to narrow street.
 

Though surprise and fear was writ large on most faces, it also became a rare instance to socialise and a chance to catch a glimpse of some hitherto unseen faces. Some were wondering if it will be a Bhuj earthquake (2001) redux. A couple of them were ruing the unbridled digging of borewells and depleting ground water table in the city, which they opined had taken away the 'shock absorbers' from such tremors. Some admitted that like me they too were reminded of long overdue health check ups and the pills they forgot to take the previous night!
 

Everyone waited outside and anxiously wondering 'what next'. Many were busy making calls on their mobile phones. Uyir thaan mukhyam (saving one’s life and limb most important) I overheard an elderly gentleman telling someone on phone. An hour later someone conveyed that an earthquake had happened somewhere in Indonesia and the worst was over.
 

With a tinge of anything-can-still-happen wariness we went back to our homes. Soon the news of tremor was all there on TV with a Tamil channel even showing a hilarious footage of a news anchor fleeing the newsroom when the tremors struck!
 

Thankfully there was no social media back then, otherwise this footage would have been godsend for Twitterati and WhatsAppers. Amid all this feeling of relief and hilarity nobody had any inkling of the actual catastrophe that was going to befall on them in a couple of hours.
 

Everyone got down to their daily routine of getting ready for office, cooking breakfast and as for kids, since it was Christmas vacation, they were getting ready for gully cricket. All blissfully unaware of the dreaded 'T' word. In fact till then the word tsunami was too esoteric to be part of popular lexicon, thanks to its peculiar pronunciation and spelling, and was restricted only to crossword and spelling bee junkies.
 

I too went through my morning routine and later had breakfast at a nearby Vasantha Bhavan restaurant. A little while later a boy from neighbourhood said, "Uncle don't go near the beach today, sea water is coming inside." I thought it was one of those nuggets coming from rumour mills, which generally go full throttle after such calamities. Moreover, with Marina beach around 10 kilometres away from my house, I had no such plans either.
 

A while later I happened to watch TV and saw the catastrophe unfold with cars parked on Marina beach bobbing like tennis balls in sea and huge swathes of coastal areas adjoining Bay of Bengal being deluged by tsunami. 

While going to office later I was astonished to see the Cooum river, which leisurely snakes through most parts of the Chennai and spreads its trademark obnoxious odour uniformly across the city, was in full flow, but in opposite direction. Almost on every bridge there were curious onlookers.

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About a fortnight later, around Pongal time, I decided to visit Pondicherry. As we hit the East Coast road and passed the dolphin city, the sight left me astonished with the enormity of tragedy. One side of the highway was dotted with tents, ranging from hep looking ones with Union Jack and stars and stripes markings to makeshift huts put up using discarded plastic cement bags. It was the same depressing scene for long stretch of my drive and induced guilt trips within me.
 

At Pondicherry the hotel was near empty with the hotel cashier lamenting they have been deprived of Pongal bonanza due to tsunami. While I was talking to him another person came to check-in and I thought 'thank God at least one tourist', but he turned out to be a tsunami relief worker! Later when I ventured out I found that the entire town wore a sullen look with restaurants, parks and beaches sparsely attended.
 

When I went to Chunnambar boat house the boatman told me he was venturing into waters for the first time after the tsunami. Boating had been suspended all these days. As the boat moved from the backwaters to the mouth of sea it gave us a feeling of eeriness as these seemingly placid waters had wreaked havoc barely a fortnight ago.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Monday 22 December 2014

Lament of 'Achche Din'

I was mostly used by people in their day-to-day conversations in past tense, often laced with strong dose of nostalgia to lament about the loss of good old days - be it college life, first crush or pre-nuptial courtship. Hence when BJP, sometime in the beginning of this year, chose to use me to refer in future tense, it came as a pleasant surprise.
 

I was all over radio and TV as part of its campaign to woo voters and as they say the rest is history (read hysteria) - the dope worked well on voters and turned them delirious. And for me it was a heady feeling and brushed off warnings by my ageing uncle 'garibi hatao' (thought he was being plain jealous) that soon I might get reduced to a joke and be used in pejorative sense.
 

For a couple of days it was celebration time with money bags of Dalal Street fuelling Sensex rallies. Soon the  government rolled out more slogans such as 'swachch Bharat', 'Make in India' and other less catchy cousins and I was never short of company.

But gradually like the wearing off of anesthesia after surgery, reality began to dawn. After a 'ho hum' Rail and Union Budgets, which only resulted in rise in train ticket fares and prices of essential commodities, sceptics began thinking aloud "when will achche din begin", but the besotted bhakts tried to silence them with angry trolls.
 

Then came the somersault over Aadhaar card for which countless Indians (even some Bangladeshis) had queued up to get photographed and finger printed. It was initially dismissed as UPA's folly and put in cold storage. But now it's on the way of being an instrument for getting LPG subsidy (as was planned by UPA). Moreover it has now become even more kosher - the finger prints taken during Aadhaar enrolment may be used to help start bank accounts as per Jan Dhan yojana. Sounds like 'puraney din' remarked a wag.
 

Of late many columnists who had vociferously believed that NDA would usher achchey din are having second thoughts about the government's performance with one of them lamenting that somebody has done black magic on Prime Minister.

About current ministry's performance another admirer and former minister cryptically remarked 'When all is said and done, more is said than done'. Then he regrets that 'The reduction of oil prices has put blinkers on people’s eyes and has delayed a reality check'. Another well known financial columnist observed that NDA was riding more on achchey sitrey (good luck) than achchey din, but wondered for how long.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Wednesday 10 December 2014

Rohtak Sisters: Bravehearts or Hunterwalis

The twists and turns of the Rohtak attack saga makes one realise the limitations of cameras in depicting reality and the whole story would make late Japanese film legend Akira Kurosawa proud. His Rashomon effect - a term which refers to real-world situations where multiple eye-witness come out with conflicting information about the same event, had come to full play in this nondescript town in Haryana.

It all started in a bus, where two skinny college girls took on three youths, one of them attacked the guys with a belt, and someone shot a video. It went viral on social media and for TRP driven TV stations it was godsend as this audacious act happened in Khap heartland and girls had survived to tell the tale. So the gutsy duo had to face the media flash bulbs and field questions ranging from valid to inane. Terms like 'braveheart', which were first coined during the infamous 16/12 Delhi rape were dusted up and made regular fixture on tickers.
 

Talking heads (all usual suspects) were brought in and the people who got branded as the ultimate villains were the passengers for not coming to the girls' rescue. The girls were put on a pedestal and showered with never ending accolades.

The state stepped in and announced recommendation for bravery award (the easiest thing to do) and patted on its own back for doing enough. The fact that  girls and women find even mundane tasks such as stepping out of their house, boarding a bus or going to college a life threatening risk, and the government hasn't done anything much in this regard was totally forgotten.

But a day later another video surfaced with the same girls thrashing another man, making many of their new found fans wonder whether they were the cornered victims or serial thrashers of men with camera in tow.
 

Around two days later the boot was in the other foot. A third video surfaced with journalist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj interviewing some of the passengers and women from villages to which the boys and girls belonged. The overwhelming tone of the interviewees was that the boys were being framed and the case was set up. One of the speakers, an aged women passenger, mentioned how her seat was usurped by the girls and the men had only asked them to vacate it, thereby leading to a fight.

Deepika by the way is a documentary film maker and currently working on 'Martyrs of Marriage', which depict the misuse of section 498A of IPC on dowry harassment by women to frame husbands and in-laws. A not so politically correct cause to follow for a woman.


The government then decided to put its plans to award the girls on hold and ordered an inquiry. Till then the guessing game continues, whether the girls were genuinely fighting eve teasers or the boys were being framed.


Also Read: Bangalore Beat