The Quake...

...and the wake

It was a refreshing experience to go amid embroidered and well-stitched cotton salwar, skirts, kurtis and kurtas at the Self Employed Women's Association exhibition. What was more touching is the flag inside the collar of the dresses which said "Buying the hand-embroidered products of the member artisans from Kutch and Banaskantha districts, 65 per cent of the sales will go to the artisans directly affected by the Gujarat quake.
This took me down memory lane. When the quake occurred in Gujarat in January 2001, I was shaken and moved to tears, in Chennai, just reading the newspaper articles and seeing the photos. I wrote a long poem then which I will share with you now. But in December 26, 2004, the tsunami hit Chennai and I was one of the journalists on the scene covering the rescue and relief operations - watching dead bodies being hauled up from the Bay of Bengal, ambulances speeding by, a line of funeral processions - the same death and destruction. But there were neither tears nor poems - probably 'cause they had been already exhausted.

WHEN DISASTER STRIKES

From the birth of the Mahatma
The total solar eclipse
To the disaster that jolted the millennium
Porbandhar, Bhuj and Ahmedabad
Have united the hearts of the country.
Gujarat has weathered many a storm,
But this quake it seems is too much for her
She shakes and sobs from deep within
Swallowing her own children in her hungry dance.

How can a mother be so cruel
Or what was the torture she did face
That she can get so gory
as to slash, maim and kill
All her children - young and old.

Was it to teach them all a lesson
That such a harsh game she was forced to play
when her quaking innards brought crumbling down
All man-made creations
Shaking and killing.

What was it you wanted to say
By ravaging thus you cruel mother:
"Tampered with me enough; stay off and away," or
"Stop meddling will you
with my lands and seas, greens and plains
Hills and rivers, air and water."

Why do you have to wait so long
To tell your children
To lessen their numbers
To build simpler houses
to live with the minimum
And not be greed.

Why were you so patient
To tell your people
To cut lesser trees.
Today they have come to a time
When they don't have enough
Even to cremate their dead.

What did you do when
Your children wer busy
Filling with concrete, their multiple storeys.
Why the silence, when in avarice they grabbed
Acres upon acres of your sylvan lands

Why the patience,
When they unmindfully chopped
The loving branches of your green country.
What for you were quiet
When your children paved
Your brown body with hot tar and concrete.
Should you have remained still
When they hammered so long
To build those mighty structures
That made them feel proud to possess.

What for the calmness
When they stopped the course
Of your sweet waterways
Damming it to be damned.

Now your children are crying
You who have failed
In your duty to chide
Your innocent wards
Even when they began to play
Very dangerous games.

Where went your warning
When your kith and kin
Spewed chemicals and poured fertilisers
choking your breath
Poisoning your food.

Tell me should you be so patient
Till you have to get so angry
And swallow your children
In such a violent upheavel.
But dear mother, at least now
You taught us your lesson
When man and women were on the road
Fighting about Ram and Rahim
You have now told them
what it means to love each other.

When man went about burning mosques and raping nuns
You couldn't find another way to stop him.
When your leaders were blabbering about Krishna or Babur
Your violent protest did shut their mouth.
When your businessmen were very busy
Exporting all your wealth abroad,
Emptying gallons of milk into the sea,
Your silent struggle in poverty
Is killing them all at one go.
They did not listen to your cry
When they built room upon unnecessary room
Shutting their hearts to their fellow humans.
Today you have shaken them
From their 10th floor complacence.
And from that height they fall
To be humbled in line with their jhopdi bretheren.

But tell me mother,
What harm did your tiny children do,
All the 400 that were buried
The innocent hearts crumbling with the debris
For this alone, I will forgive you not.

But better late than never at all.
For at least now you taught your children
How to get together to help others
at loeast now they learnt their lesson
That with calamity comes unity
at least with this it has struck them
Not to tamper too much with you,
At least at this point they realise
The rich and the poor are
One and the same.
Though 'tis the eleventh hour
They have found out
That they should lend a ear
to your whispers and warnings,

What Mahatma Gandhi could not teach,
What the scriptures and texts failed to convey,
Your silent quake has shown them the need
To work in harmony and with content be.
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