Degrees of Horror

My birthdays are usually uneventful. Well, except for the fact that they fall on Republic Day, January 26th, of course. In fact, when I was a child (apparently not a particularly bright one) my family had me convinced that the parade in the capital was in my honor. I bought that until I began to wonder why I was never invited to my own parade. Then I moved to the U.S. and a visit to that glorious parade with its display of military prowess, and colorful uniforms remained an unobtainable dream.

The year 2001 rolled around and I waited, with childlike anticipation for some excitement, some event for this birthday. It happened, just not in the way I wanted. Thousands of miles away, in the country I call home, the earth shook, and within a few moments devoured the lives of thousands, destroying the dreams of those who survived, severing relationships and ties in an instant. And I realized, uneventful might be a good thing.

As I scoured the media for news of the devastation in Gujarat, questions roiled around in my brain like frenzied bubbles of boiling water.

Where do you go when the ground shifts underfoot?

When shelters become traps?

When you are starved for the barest light, for the smallest drop of water, the merest scrap of food?

Where do you go when one half of your family lies in the morgue, the others still trapped, under the ruins of your home?

Where do you go when you lose everyone who made your life worth living?

Where do you go when your baby daughter's hand, glass bangles miraculously intact, reaches up in a death-claw through the rubble?

Where do you turn? Whom do you blame? Do you even have anyone to blame?

Do you blame the wind, the ground, the government?

Do you blame the God you believe in, the forces of nature, the gods who smile at you from their temples? Who?



Instances, which change the directions of life forever, make you question other things as well.

How does the baby cradled safely in its mother's warming blood and cooling body grow up?

With guilt?

With a lingering memory of horror?

What nightmares will rear in the night, making sleep a distant memory?

And what about us, those of us sitting thousands of miles away, who can only send money. Money to do what? Scraps of paper cannot make anything better. They can buy things. They cannot buy back lives, memories, unfinished arguments, unresolved issues. They cannot erase the pain that will be the constant companion of all the survivors. Not even Bill Gates' billions can do that.

During elemental disasters, those who escape, selfishly evaluate the tragedies within the perimeter of their own lives. That corny old saying of feeling sorry for yourself because you had no shoes until you saw someone who had no feet, suddenly makes sense.

It is inescapable. Evaluating the world, life and death, with you as the center is a universal trap.

Phone calls from concerned friends poured in as soon as the news hit the television stations, radio and the Internet.

"Heard about that earthquake in India. Wanted to make sure your family is okay." They asked.

"Hope no-one from your family was there."

"Yes, thankfully they are fine," we would respond, "we got through on the phone last night. They are fine."

A bullet dodged, a speeding train averted. There but for the grace of God go I.

But were we, even those whose families in India were unscathed, unaffected by this catastrophe?

We are all, on this earth, connected by just six degrees after all. The richest man in the world, to the homeless bereaved person, warming himself by a fire. The thief who sees disaster as an opportunity, to the rescuer who scrabbles through broken concrete to answer a faint cry for help. All the sung and unsung heroes of Gujarat to those of us, sitting comfortably on our couches, flipping the channels on the television for glimpses of destroyed neighborhoods in Kutch.

I and the woman sitting by her ruined house, bewildered and shocked, mourning the death of her entire family, his life - just six degrees.

Just six people between me and someone who lay underneath the rubble, hoping to be rescued, only to die as the air ran out.

Just six degrees between utter horror and I.

Just six degrees between death and I.

And just six degrees between bereavement and I.

I know someone who knows someone who knows someone else who just might be one of the dead or bereaved in Gujarat.

In this world of six billion people, this huge human family, with all its squabbles and fights and battles over territory and religion and ideas, we are all just a few degrees removed from the horrors in Gujarat.

Never again can I truly say, "Yes, my family is fine. They were not harmed."

Never has this relationship that I shrugged off with a veil of sophistication, been more evident. Times such as these, strip away the pretences, the devices, the layers and masks, exposing the fears bind all of us together: of death, of loss, of facing everything that everyone in Kutch is facing.

Someone in Kutch is just a few degrees removed from me. Her tears and loss frighten and humble me, making me selfishly hold my loved ones tighter together. Trying to decipher this tragedy - if one can even begin to do that - fills me with dread. If my mind, sitting thousand of miles away, cannot grasp the enormity of this calamity, how can hers?

Someone in Kutch is part of my family. Today, I am bereaved. Though I cannot know what that woman is feeling, I can try and empathize. An imperfect, humble and inexact tool, but it is all I have.

From now till the end of my days, every birthday will bring remembrance of her and for that one day, for one instant I will wonder how she is, this member of my human family, six degrees removed.