The earthquake in Haiti

Needless to say this incident is very unfortunate. My sympathy and precious $25 toward company matching contribution is already underway. People around US generally prefer and build their houses with wood, but Haitians being in Caribbean, build concrete ones as their first priority is to be safe from hurricanes. But, when an earthquake epicenter is just few miles away and of magnitude 7 in Richter scale, you can not expect your house to remain on ground.

By watching CNN and the complete decimation of the capital city I got drowned into my own experience 9 years back.

On January 26, 2001 Gujarat (in India) experienced a major earthquake, that was the starting for 'Media era' and within minutes whole world knew of it. A day after IBM planned for a rescue-come-relief mission to Kuchh area in Gujarat (worst hit area)

Being in IBM and being on 'bench' those days I decided to lend my helping hand (though I was not exactly planning to remove debris to find bodies, at least I was praying to not to do it). God listened to me and I was given a task of entering data for daily incoming relief materials. Also prospect of being on a air plane was a major deciding factor too ;)

I and few other camped at Samakhiali village on Bhuj- Ahemedabad highway. Daily 100s of trucks loaded with relief material used to cross us, but, not before furnishing our desktops with details about the truck contents. At the end of each day during night we used to tally data from all collection and distribution centers and the subsequent analysis were then sent to Gujarat govt. to let them know about shortfall or excess of relief at any center in Kuchh area.

Unfortunately I didn't have access to digital camera, or else I could have own a few photographic contexts just by clicking the scenes on near by villages and townships. I had seen two storied buildings becoming single storied I had seen people sleeping on roads (as I went there after a few days I did not notice any one who perished). I had seen people rioting for food packets.

Our mornings were interesting, it used to start with a trip to nearby Babool bushes with a bottle of Bisleri in hand. It was quiet a struggle, we had to compete with the pigs who consider those as delicacy, and the moment you offload something they will come towards you to eat out...you have to run....run for your a...but be careful the trees are Babool...you know what I mean...imagine that you are running with your pants down through Babool tress...oh dear god!

In the mornings we were on Fafra, Khakra and Dhokla diet, the gujju dishes, which Amir Khan thought of as weapons of mass distructions ( 'Saddam ne USA par do dhokle gira diye hain' ) in his movie 3 idiots.

In between our shifts of intense data entry, during breaks, we used to go for relief work to near by villages the buildings were destroyed exactly the same way as they are showing these days from Haiti. The nearest town was Anjar, where we couldn't find even a single structure intact. People, all god fearing people, used to even blame the Bollywood movies for the destruction as if god was angry by watching unethical things in Hindi movies.

We were there for 2 weeks before moving to Bhuj for a day and then finally got our flight back to Pune. Experience was great and a sense of satisfaction was there in all of us. I cant do anything this time, except my $25

One interesting coincidence though...between the two incidents...people still blame global warming for earthquakes, but why would earth shake itself because of pollution? Can it sneeze?