THE SILENT FURY OF NATURE

The nature, in the form of Tsunami this Sunday, has once again demonstrated its might and dominance over all living and non-living things and this entire world in a most furious manner ever seen by man and left a significant part of this world in shambles in matter of minutes. The enormity and magnitude of the calamity and the shortest possible time within which it was inflicted has truly left the whole human civilisation shocked and numbed to say the least.

I do have words to explain the catastrophic situation at the Marina beach, Chennai. Disastrous or Heart breaking is too insensitive a term to explain the situation in a bright sunny Sunday morning when men, women and children were running helter and skelter hysterically crying and wailing to save their lives, where just a few minutes ago there was complete serenity with people flocking the beach to have a nice cool Sunday morning stroll. It took just a few minutes or may be even seconds to convert what looked like a paradise into a battle field where nature won over humanity without even a fight.

But then nature is not our enemy. Nature has always been stated to be mother and worshipped as God and meant to protect all living being like its child. With this perception would it be appropriate to describe this event as calamity or nature’s fury. As Swami Chinmayananda had said, God is the best Leader or Manager under whose control the nature functions without any flaw almost. The spiritual leader explained that the so-called calamities like flood, draught, cyclones, earthquakes etc. are just the corrective measures taken by the nature to overcome the imbalance created in its system by we humans who are supposed to live under its care and treat nature as our mother. We destroy the nature and the balance of its system everyday by cutting trees to build concrete jungles, emitting excessive Carbon monoxide making the earth warmer, building dams indiscriminately thereby putting excessive pressure in the earths crust where it is not supposed to be, detonating nuclear bombs deep inside earth shaking its roots and all this is done under a false pretence of trying to improve the quality of human life by overcoming the vagaries of nature. But the nature, much like a responsible mother with a view to instill discipline on its children and protect the existence of human beings in this world, takes corrective measures, termed by us as calamities, to overcome its imbalances and preserve this world for a long time much beyond our lifetime. May be without this correction, we would have been waiting for a much bigger and disastrous calamity. When will we humans understand that our survival and quality of life can be best protected only by nature and no human effort can ever succeed in making it better than the nature and that science and technology can never ever succeed in a challenge with nature.

One more big lesson I learnt from this calamity, though in the most bitterest manner. Myself and my colleague have been in Chennai since for about four years and had always nurtured a dream of spending an early sunny Sunday morning in the Marina Beach playing in the waters and then returning to have a delicious buffet breakfast in the Hotel Residency, but time or shall I say fate never permitted it. Unfortunately ….. my colleague with his wife succeeded in making his dream come true this Sunday but only to shatter all the dreams of his family as he paid the maximum price the God could ask for it. That gave me a big lesson that some dreams are better when they remain a dream as their realisation might be too bitter and I would never crib hereafter when my dream does not come true.

THIS IS AN INTERNATION DISASTER AND CATASTROPHE, BUT FRIENDS THIS IS MORE A TIME FOR INTROSPECTION THAN MOURNING. LET US LIVE WITH NATURE THAN FIGHT IT AND PERISH