Invasion of Nature

December 25th 2004
It was Christmas day four years back. No matter to which religion you belong to, you can always enjoy the week before Christmas especially the Christmas eve and the Christmas day if you happen to go out. One of such destinations is always Spencer Plaza. That day, my cousins and I decided to visit Spencer Plaza at night. I invited Arun and he joined us. We roamed around the plaza as usual watching the beautiful decorations there. Arun invited me to join him in the bike ride on the way back home. I accepted.

It was around 8.30 pm when we were riding back home. We almost reached home when Arun came up with an idea.

Arun : Shall we go to the beach?
Myself : At this time?
Arun : Ya. Let us go.

Arun took a U-turn and we were two km away from the house when the bike tyres started shaking.

Arun : Do you recognize the problem with the bike?
Myself : Is it a puncture?
Arun : Yes!

He took the bike to the left side of the road and brought it to a halt. There were no mechanic shops nearby neither would they have been open if there had been any. As there was no other choice, we started pushing the bike to Arun's house (Much of it was done by Arun though ;) ) . I took an auto from Arun's house and reached my house.

December 26,2004. 5:45 am IST
My parents woke me up. I didn't bother thinking why they woke me up as the words were sufficient.

Dad : Get up! There has been an earthquake!

I couldn't believe it. I have heard before that one could feel the after-effects of the earthquake such as giddiness even minutes after the earthquake. I didn't know whether I was imagining it but the more I started thinking about it, the more I started getting giddy feeling. We hurried downstairs. As we went for the exit, I had a glimpse of the fish tank. The gold fishes, they say, predict earthquakes. They move awkwardly and rapidly minutes before the earthquake. But this time, they were behaving normally. Probably no more earthquakes.

After standing outside for half an hour, we decided to get back into the house and watch the news clippings. All the news channels were busy with their own versions of the earthquake that happened in the south east part of Asia.

Four hours later:
My mom told me that huge waves had entered into the land.
I recognized what it was. It is a Tsunami! I have read about it when I was a kid. But it happens only in Japan, right? I thought to myself.

Myself : When?
Mom : It happened sometime back.

I thought there wouldn't have been much damage. Only after seeing the news sometime later, I realized that there had been a catastrophe. News clippings told us about the horrible tsunami that had invaded the shores of the south-eastern shore of India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Nature comes without a warning but this one did come in the form of earthquake at a magnitude of around 9 few hours back. People should have anticipated it. But the present generation would have never anticipated it as it was never ever expected to occur. The last disastrous tsunami in India was centuries back when it invaded Kolkata and the southern shore of India.

The night before, I had planned to go to beach. If there had been no puncture and had I gone, I can't imagine what trauma I would've faced if I had known that I was at the beach half a day before the disaster occured. The disaster was horrible marking it as the most destructive earthquake ever. Millions of people lost their lives and homes. Days after days, videos of tsunami were showed on TV and I still don't know why the news channels showed a clipping of a four year old girl being gulped by a tsunami. Is it that important when the parents and the relatives of the child would've been in a trauma?

If that is one side of the story, there was also another side. People from around the world started helping the families of the victims of tsunami. Contributions came from all over the world. That was the time when the world united. They looked upon it as a human's problem. Looks like only nature can unite the world? But at the cost of a disaster?

It took a while for everyone to go to the beach normally again. Now it is probably safe with the meteorological department promising that they would send warning of any possible occurence of a tsunami. Let us hope it never occurs again.