Aftermath

Home for the holidays, the last thing I expected was to be greeted by an earthquake that hit 9 on the Richter scale.

I knew about earthquakes. Growing up in Delhi, every so often Daddy would charge into my room and yell at me to get out because the whole house was shaking like jelly. These attacks almost invariably occurred in the middle of the night and outside we’d find the entire neighborhood standing about on the lawns, freezing their toes off in winter or idly chatting in summer. After standing about for half an hour, everyone would go grumbling back to bed.

But I also remember this one time when I looked up and saw a corner of our roof come crumbling down. That day I understood that these excursions and alarums in the middle of the night weren’t manifestations of my father’s weird sense of fun but a serious threat to our safety.

It’s years later and the worst thing that can happen in our once sleepy hometown is death by carbon monoxide if stuck some unlucky day on its increasingly congested roads. Or so I believed until Boxing Day 2004 when I woke up to find Daddy banging on my door once again at half past six in the morning.

“Get dressed! Get dressed!” he yelled furiously through the door. “Earthquake!”

Half-remembered reflexes got me scrambling into some clothes and racing out the door… only to find Daddy cursing under his breath and giving his bedroom the evil eye.

“Where’s Ma?” I asked, looking around.

“Putting on her jewelry,” he gritted out.

“What?” I half-yelled/half-snorted with laughter, coughing to cover it up. Ma’s a full-fledged Aquarian and through hard experience us kids learnt long ago that the only way to keep the familial peace was to grin and bear it. Not so my ferocious father.

Ma wandered out a few minutes later. “I couldn’t find my watch.”

Daddy looked ready to explode so I grabbed her hand and took the stairs down.

“Why can’t we take the elevator?” she complained.

Daddy explained in words that would have done no good to anybody’s self-esteem.

“I think you’re overreacting,” she said placidly and continued on her way without a backward glance at Daddy’s sputtering form bringing up the rear.

They were both right – while the threat was very real, by virtue of our location on India’s western seaboard we were largely safe from the tsunamis triggered by the earthquake off Sumatra. And perhaps because of that early morning lightheartedness, it was all the more shocking when we switched on the TV and discovered that millions of our neighbors had lost their homes and loved ones.

Safe at home, we watched a representative of the Red Cross politely ask people for donations and to ensure that any clothes they donated were well washed and in good condition. Calling around and asking people for whatever help they could provide, I found the checkbooks and cartons were already open. However, I was then stunned to find a number of people who were a little hesitant to do anything.

“For God’s sake why?” I asked Daddy after one such episode.

“You don’t understand the Indian mentality,” he informed me, as if I weren’t Indian myself. “People will always wonder if their money is going to the victims or being swallowed by someone else.”

“So what do you do? Not help?”

“N-no,” said Daddy. “You give as much as you can and hope that it gets where it’s supposed to. If you want to.”

Despite their cynicism, a lot of people wanted to. It was hard to find a single person unaffected by the scale of the tragedy unraveling in front of their eyes. In those early hours when the full extent of the devastation was still unknown, many had the same thought running through their minds – there but for the grace of God, go I.

My best friend wrote in from Dubai where people were canceling beach parties and snow covered a neighboring emirate, praising her Sri Lankan colleagues, all of them, without exception, affected by the tsunami. One clerk in her office had just received word that his wife and one child were safe while his mother and second child were missing, presumed dead. Even as the man broke down, his compatriots were arranging for money and a ticket to Sri Lanka.

“There is none of that indifference that I see in so many Indians,” she wrote. “None of that ‘it’s-not-my-problem’ mentality. Their entire community just leapt into action and closed ranks. No cynicism, no hesitation. How many Indians do you see acting like that?”

Another friend, an American, wrote in asking how she could help. She said she was glad to know from me that there were so many positive things going on, such as the unprecedented levels of donation around the world, the almost immediate reaction of a number of countries and organizations to the disaster, the work of various NGOs, tales of heroism and bravery that trickled out of the worst hit areas and the extensive relief operations announced by the United Nations and the Red Cross. As ever the heroes of the hour were the people who’d lost more than anyone else. Poor fisher folk who’d just seen their lives ripped apart ferried people to safety, tourists woke up on a lazy Sunday battling for their lives before diving in to save the locals, parents who lost their children as they helped save other people’s kids. Checking the Internet for news, all she’d come across were examples of the blame game.

The apportioning of blame is both predictable and, in some cases, incredible. There are those who believe that this is some kind of global divine retribution (“God said, wipe out the sinners!”), others who say that the fact that tsunamis are extremely rare in the Indian Ocean is no reason why the poor countries around its rim didn’t invest in a warning system long ago, and of course, the Americans were first accused of deliberately withholding important information on the arrival of the tsunamis and then of miserliness towards the aid effort, then later cussed for false information leading to full scale panic and interference in the region. And in the middle of all this are political parties jockeying for mileage, at least in India.

On the third day my mother showed me the picture of a little cherub with big sad eyes, covered with mosquito bites visible even through the poor quality of the print, as he stared into the camera after losing his mother and grandmother. Little Hannes reminded me that in this, as in all other tragedies, children are the biggest victims. On TV, a tearstained correspondent reported from amidst a group of little children orphaned by the sea in South India. Another little girl in Indonesia was shown with gangrene setting into the wounds on her face after being without medical attention for two days in an overwhelmed rural hospital. Over 150, 000 are estimated dead – a number so immense it is hard to believe that it correlates to actual people. WHO says an equal number may yet die from diseases spawned in the wet heat and ruin left behind by the waves. How many of those will be little children?

There are other stories too – of a little newborn girl who miraculously escaped the waves and was named Tsunami by her grateful parents. Of a dog who jumped into the waves and saved the kids of his house. Of locals who opened their homes and hearts to the tourists stranded in their country. These are a few rays of sunshine that manage to shine through the rubble that today lines the coast of the Indian Ocean.

As I write, seven days have passed since the earth literally wobbled on its axis. As 2005 progresses, the story of the killer waves that hit Asia and caused the deaths of people around the world is bound to fade and travel the inevitable path off the front pages of daily newspapers. But its effects will be seen for generations to come as millions of South and Southeast Asians add a new word to their lexicon this winter – tsunami.