A thunderous shaking of earth brings the grief-stricken planet together. Any lessons to be learnt beyond the expression of trauma and torment! Yes, there are many.
Memories of October 2005 earthquake linger in a Kashmiri mind. We can very well refresh those heart rending images of entire families being wiped out. Comparing any two tragedies to underline the diminutive character of one sounds cold. But to grasp fully well what fell Haiti on that fateful day of 12th January, allusion to 2005 experience is poignant. The unimaginable human loss that we so grimly put in figures is only beyond description. When Genghis Khan marauded over Baghdad turning the bustling city into one expansive graveyard, a historian of the times elucidated d the scale of devastation by his denial-of-description. He wrote that if I try to describe what Genghis did to the city, people would resist the description as untruth. Had it not been for the technology that allows images to travel across globe what portrayal could make us visualize the Haitian disaster!
In this report-inebriated world of media, magnitude of a disaster is fathomed in terms of numbers only. In this obnoxious world if you tell anyone that London bridge has fallen down, he will shoot back by asking, “How long was this bridge and how many are feared dead”! Pity our life has been nailed against a number-line. Thousands killed, hundreds of thousands injured, properties worth billions of dollars destroyed………..! We have become digitized creatures. 
Fact of the matter is that when tragedies are reduced to statistics, they lose their meaning. For a wounded survivor in Haiti, the enormity of disaster is not to be measured on a Richter scale, but by the loss of family members, relatives and friends. The cries of dying cannot be quantified. The heaps of rubble underneath which lay buried hushed promises, deceased prospects, slaughtered emotions and the maimed banalities of life…. How can this be computed! This represents the loss. It is to be felt not counted.
Except that initial shock, statistics kill the capacity to understand a calamity. Haiti quake -Two hundred thousand dead. Banners run in red. Is it all about how many died! Presume for a while that the number of dead was less by fifty thousand; what difference would it make to the shock. It was still as painful, as frightening and as horrible. 
It is a huge lesson for those who retain the human in themselves. Think of every single individual. Think of the dreams, fascinations, worries, plans, friends, families … how many living entities are associated with each single life.  Desert is not about how many trillions of sand particles have gathered to occupy a space. Ocean is not a countless assemblage of water drops. When we look up into heavens we don’t measure beauty by counting the twinkling. Or do we! When we think of ourselves, is it one individual. When we think family, is it four, five or six individuals. Life cannot be fathomed by making it stand against a number line. It’s the absurdity of expression to describe a tragedy, like the one that struck Haiti, in terms of how many people died and how many dwellings were flattened. We need a human heat to grasp this Haiti, not a calculator to fix the statistics.
Abominable cynicism if the other side of the picture is not presented. The whole globe has stood for Haiti. From across the pacific to Down under, from Europe to Arab countries, from African neighbors to far off Asian nations, all stand with Haiti in this hour of grief. Relief and other emergency operations have flown in from all the four corners of the world. States and non state organizations have rushed in to treat the wounded and feed the shelterless people. Of a sudden all divisions of commerce and politics have vanished. It is a poignant reminder from nature that splits created by borders and bayonets are false. In October 2005 the point was driven home very well. That shock too had  really rendered the borders ‘irrelevant’.
Another point that strikes the mind is this: imagine a ‘justification’ is crafted for the ghastly human tragedy that struck Haiti! What will happen?
The tragic part of it will start fading off. Next, it will morph into an event with a space and temporality attached to it. The unanimous global response, comprising shock and sympathy, will dissipate. What is pure human tragedy will invite contentious descriptions and competing narratives. Around these splinters of broken up global response, everyone will weave his tapestry of morality and realism, giving birth to a nomenclature of justification.
Now deaths will be named and put in the respective columns. If it becomes little difficult to understand, here are other examples of human tragedies, the impact of which get attenuated by an accompanied narrative/s.
Millions died in Rwanda. Even the Haitian statistics turn pale. Why wasn’t there a unanimous upsurge of sympathy for the Rwandans! Just compare the response of France in the two cases. Haiti - it is all sympathy and help. Rwanda - arms were supplied to a certain faction to ensure the annihilation of other. And remember that Biblical myth about races!
People are dying elsewhere also. Afghanistan is a land of more dead than living. Add to it all other conflict zones where tragedies strike every other minute. But the global response stands compartmentalized as everyone ‘justifies’ his share of violent participation. These ‘justifications’ are the real epicenters of disaster. Corporate globalization, militarization, nationalism, and ideologies based on skewed interpretation of sacred texts are some such epicenters.

{The columnist is GK Magazine Editor. Feedback at mrvaid@greaterkashmir.com}

Lastupdate on : Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 IST