earth shaking

I'm sitting on a rickety cot
in a village on the outskirts of New Delhi
tapping away at this computer when I feel the cot under me tremble a little. Having lived for a while in Shillong, in the earthquake zone of northern India, I'm familiar with this tremor and instinctively look at a bottle of water placed across the room. Sure enough, it's undulating. The movement lasts for about ten seconds, nothing really alarming.

The family downstairs are busy with their daily hores, stuff that village people do at about nine thirty on a Saturday morning, and I call out to them... there's just been an earthquake... look at the water in your kitchen vessels, and they are amazed that the earth could have trembled and they were unaware of the fact.

A few minutes FM stations break in with the news that a government meeting in Chandigarh hasbeen disrupted because of the tremor, the Prime Minister was moved out of the building. An hour later, the earthquake is on the national and international news headlines... the earth shook in Kashmir, .. that much disputed piece of land in the Himalayas that has been the bone of contention between India and Pakistan; Kashmir- [Cashmere]- an issue that has rocked several hundred sessions of the Indian Parliament -- once again the Kahmir shook and literally, the tremors were felt in New Delhi.

The devastation and loss of precious human lives accompany any natural disaster. and once again, the media feeds us with stories of death, of struggle, and of heroism.

Maybe, tragedies like this one are sent to us so that we can prove to ourselves that we are not just mere thinking animals, that there rests within us what is known as an eternal soul, a ruh, an atman, and that we frail human creatures can rise beyond our narrow confines of self and up to the occasion and perform acts of selflesness and courage for the well-being of others....