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| Sunday, 13 February 2005 |
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Different outlook by Arefa Tehsin The calmness and serenity A small village, A place with hardworking men, And God-fearing too, The boats upside down, There was a disaster. They say. Seeing is believing, is what I have ofton heard and read. What happens when you can't believe even after seeing? That is perhaps the end of imagination. In May 2004, for the first time I saw the mesmerising Sri Lankan coastline and was rendered speechless by the beauty Nature has bequeathed on this little isle. In early January 2005, I travelled the same route after this mega-disaster for relief work. Down on Galle Road, seeing the remains of the two minute wrath and fury of the beautiful sea on the beautiful land and its inhabitants was beyond all imagination. I could not accept, looking at the deep green and blue waters on one side of the road that it was they who had reduced to rubble all that existed on the other side. Bentota, Habarana, Galle, Yala, small villages and towns in between. gruesome annihilation was on the increase as we moved further down South, and then again further up from the South eastern tip. We met some people who had survived the waves and saw the graves of numerous others who had not. But "whom unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster" were not the people who had sunk into the oblivion, but they were those who had survived without a roof on their heads, with nothing to make a living and no loved ones to live with. Amongst the shaken and shattered lives what was amazing to see was the unshaken and unshattered belief in the Almighty and the resilient spirit of human kind. Shakespeare had marvelled that "we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by compulsion." The celestials up there, I believe, had nothing to do with this calamity that we ourselves invited upon us. We have been ravaging this tiny planet that we supposedly call our home with a not so tiny a greed. Even today after witnessing all this so closely, me, you and all of us, feel cosy in the comforts of our houses and continue doing what we always have done and think that all this can never happen to us. Reminds me of Tom Bodett's observation - "The difference between school and life? In school, you are taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you are given a test that teaches you a lesson." Seeing the sad plight of our fellow beings and getting a whiff of the decaying dead is a humbling experience like none other, showing us how puny we are along with all our weapons and technologies and how massive is the force of nature. Lets learn to live in peace with not just our planet but also with sun and moon and stars and the universe, as plans are underway to exploit the moon and planets already. We have not seen the powers yet and lets not forget that whatever goes round comes back. |
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