Earthquake hits Japan on 11th March 2011, followed by a 10 meter Tsunami wave. While I mostly remained numb and nonchalant about the disaster, a conversation that was somewhere buried inside started surfacing, bringing in images I had never seen.
I sit holding my writing pad, in which my datasheets are struggling, for the wind from the sea is hard. I try to concentrate on the couple of fishermen who are playing cards after their days work. I clear my throat and interrupt their conversation,
"So, do you think there has been any change in the fish catch after Tsunami?"
There is the standard answer which most researchers get, "Tsunami took everything from us. Now even the fishes have become scarce. It is all due to Tsunami!"
Gazing into the past one of them started telling me, "You know Madam, just a few days before Tsunami hit the coast of Tamilnadu, I sat just like this with my friends playing cards. I don't remember what we were talking about, but someone asked, which element of nature would be so dangerous as to destroy the earth?"
"I thought for a while and told them, it should be water. The sea which gives life has the strength to take it too. And just after that came this huge wave splashing on us, taking away whatever we called our future. In one minute we lost everything. And everyone called it Tsunami. We came to know it then, that there was something called Tsunami."
"For all we knew is that the sea was our mother. Each day she gave us our food. All we know is the sea. But after the Tsunami we understood her strength. The one that gives us life can take it too."
That respect for the strength of nature from an illiterate yet experienced man, still baffles me...
I sit holding my writing pad, in which my datasheets are struggling, for the wind from the sea is hard. I try to concentrate on the couple of fishermen who are playing cards after their days work. I clear my throat and interrupt their conversation,
"So, do you think there has been any change in the fish catch after Tsunami?"
There is the standard answer which most researchers get, "Tsunami took everything from us. Now even the fishes have become scarce. It is all due to Tsunami!"
Gazing into the past one of them started telling me, "You know Madam, just a few days before Tsunami hit the coast of Tamilnadu, I sat just like this with my friends playing cards. I don't remember what we were talking about, but someone asked, which element of nature would be so dangerous as to destroy the earth?"
"I thought for a while and told them, it should be water. The sea which gives life has the strength to take it too. And just after that came this huge wave splashing on us, taking away whatever we called our future. In one minute we lost everything. And everyone called it Tsunami. We came to know it then, that there was something called Tsunami."
"For all we knew is that the sea was our mother. Each day she gave us our food. All we know is the sea. But after the Tsunami we understood her strength. The one that gives us life can take it too."
That respect for the strength of nature from an illiterate yet experienced man, still baffles me...
