Sunday, March 13, 2011

Musings




Ten meter high wave, traveling as fast as a jet plane. Each carrying tones of water. Ploughing under all and anything in its path; more than 1300 feared dead and tens of thousands unaccounted- missing! Literal decimation of a city. Ships, tugs and yachts berthed in the port twisted and thrown around like nine pins. The power of nature- its fury unleashed in proportions that is nightmarishly frightening for real and leaves one behind in awe. The collateral damage – unceasingly burning oil refineries, multitude of fires, four missing trains, and a catastrophic shutdown of a nuclear power plant! That was the Tsunami, the outcome of a massive seismological shake up down below in the tectonic plates and measuring 8.9 on the Richter. The most massive since the recording of seismic events began in the very early 1900’s.Those were the events that were unleashed in the past week in the Japanese costal town. Imagine a few such earth quakes can unleash with inconceivable abundance, forces that can literally wipe out the “Lord of all that he surveys- Man”.
A few years ago a similar cataclysm saw hundreds of thousand being swept down under by gushing sea water in the Tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean states.

Time and again, what more does Nature have to exhibit in blunt  terms and tell us, “Man you are an insignificant bit of star dust and do not matter in my scheme of things. You are not the cog in the wheel that triggers the sun to rise and set, the moon to rise and dazzle in splendour, the oceans to churn, the fishes to festally swim in aura of colors that spellbind. The mighty whales to go distance, the birds, the butterflies, the chameleons, the bees, the crickets, the gregarious little ants and the beasts of the jungle to enhance the grandeur of this world! The seasons to change , the rains to cool, the trees to bloom and fruit, the skies to stay blue, the tempests to beat, the stars to glow and wink! For your decimation can be in a whiff which you may not even notice! Therefore why this audacity, this lordliness, this avarice, this pride, this impulsiveness and false hood? Think,think you are only an aid of the things that are better and necessary for this World to turn around. And a dispensable bit of aid”.

The Tsunami was another instance of Nature imploring man to be just and kind with all that she has  and she owns..Because, for she is not powerless or dead. She can change the world and change it for ever and for good.

 Watching clear midnight skies
suddenly intense storms come alive
showing her rage
as each lightning bolt strikes
Mother Nature no longer sits
idly by

A plink and a plank is heard outside
once she tears up
and starts to cry

Windows rattle
foundations shake
as the roar of her thunder
is heard miles away

Mercy her violence does not show
causing many to scatter
while others are shattered

This mother 
has single handedly 
earned her respect
proving once and for all
a match for no man

---Sherry Lynn

10 comments:

Balachandran V said...

Reading it was as spellbinding as watching the wake of destruction left behind by the Tsunami. A Malayalam poet once wrote:
Anantham Ajnatham Avarnaneeyam
Ee Bhoogola Lokam thiriyunna neram
Athilengan irikkunna marthyan Kadhayendu Kandoo?

Vast, Unknown, inexpressible the way the earth goes around;
Man, you sitting in a little corner of it, what do you know about it?

Yet we go on, building our castles,
making money, killing others, building dams, destroying nature, destroying fellow humans and smugly believing that all's well with the world!

Insignia said...

This post surely jolts the reader. But what do you think? We will forget after few days and engage ourselves in satisfying our needs; selfish and unconcerned.

Shilpa Garg said...

Very vivid description!
Those affected by it are hit in every aspect, but for most of us it will be history soon...

dr.antony said...

So beautifully written.I don't know if it could be expressed any better.

It is the Lent season for Christians,and we say "Remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return". Seldom do we remember this at other times,busy with the business of life.

I remember being taught the mechanisms of population control during our preventive medicine classes. Floods,famine, drought were all methods mentioned as " Natural Check",nature's methods to control population !

Nature doesn't seem to have a conscience.Amazing, yet weird, nature never cease to surprise us as well.It lets the thieves and murderers to flourish and grow, and lets the good and kind hearted to rot and suffer.

"It is well known that Nature manages, rather mysteriously, to keep constant the relative frequency of certain natural phenomena. For instance, whether men proliferate at the Northern Pole or at the Equator, whether the matching couples are developed or underdeveloped, whether they are black, red, white or yellow the female to male ratio among the newly born is a constant, with a very slight prevalence of males. We do not know how Nature achieves this remarkable result but we know that in order to achieve it Nature must operate with large numbers". There is an order and rhythm for nature and the universe in general, and we try in vain to find reasons and explanations in science.

Nature, in her indifference ( or anger?), makes no distinction between good and evil.

anilkurup59 said...

@ Balan,

Exactly as you said.Mountain of human ignorance and meanness that we all exhibit. Why this special trait in human beings and not in other creatures that share the planet?

anilkurup59 said...

@ Insignia, Yes B , you are right. Human memory is quicksilver, it is short lived.Why? I cant tell , I do not know.

anilkurup59 said...

@ Shilpa Garg,
Yes indeed all will be history and things of the past.
But then those for get history are condemned to repeat it!

anilkurup59 said...

Doc Antony,
Yes doc I have learned that bit too in some books on Economics in college. "natures way of population control and maintaining balances and checks".
What I deliberately did not mention in the post is, nothing ,neither man or beasts or flora matters to Nature. In her scheme of things all these are dispensable trivial worms.And also I did not mention so was because I feel the hubris of man has no bounds but,animals do not exhibit arrogance and air of invincibility.

By the way I'm humbled by your statement in NRI"s blog. But the accolade is too much to handle and I'm certainly not worthy of it. Believe me I'm just a rookie who pens his thoughts.Some may agree with my mutterings , some may not . And that is the way it has to be , isnt it so ?

Happy Kitten said...

How well you have brought out man's insignificance!

Had the same feeling while reading the following article.. it is too long but interesting..
...................
It's weirdly distressing to be here. As a human, it's like staring down the barrel of our likely fate. We may wipe ourselves out with a nuclear holocaust, or with carbon and methane, or some other way we can't yet conceive of. Or nature may do it for us. When it happens, trees may or may not mind. Cyano­bacteria poisoned their own atmosphere two and a half billion years ago by releasing vast quantities of a gas that was poisonous to them—oxygen—and in the process created an atmosphere suited to higher forms of land life. Who knows what creatures may adapt to a high-carbon, high-methane atmosphere if we keep going the way we are? They may include us, or not.

http://outsideonline.com/adventure/travel-pf-201103-chernobyl-wildlife-refuge-sidwcmdev_154483.html

anilkurup59 said...

@ Happy Kitten,

Thank you for the visit and comment.

yes you are right in the event of a repeat of a natural cataclysm man will not survive. It is only good that he do not develop the immune system to outlive a natural biological carnage.
Yes nature will not look desolate sans man. Certainly she will not!