Disaster and Disastrous…

Disasters are definitely the ‘in’ thing nowadays what with what with avalanches, cloud-bursts and floods having become commonplace occurrences. A disaster management cell can be found in almost every home and even the government has been trying to set up something along these lines for a long time now. In fact only yesterday I tried to convince my father that we should be setting up a disaster management cell in our home. Imagine my surprise when he informed me that my mother and he himself had set up something like that decades back! 

“When?!” I asked pretty much impressed.

   

“The very day you were born!” my father responded with his customary calm, as usual an inscrutable expression on his face. I had a feeling that he was pulling my leg or is it that he was trying to convey a message of sorts?! I am still trying to figure it out.

A few days back I met an old friend of mine. He is a very enthusiastic sort of guy with all kinds of wild ideas and schemes. Last time I met him, he was drafting a plan for the government regarding bottling the fresh air of our hill stations and selling the same to the dwellers of the polluted metropolitans! The scheme had to be shelved because a local MLA threatened to start an agitation if his constituency was deprived of its fresh air, it being already rather thin in hilly areas as his son had read to him from a primer of geography.

“What are you doing these days?” I asked the fellow.

“I am a Disaster Management Cell!” he said.

“You mean part of a Disaster Management Cell, don’t you?” I sought to proof read his remark.

“No I meant a Disaster Management Cell. I am the sole in-charge you know!” he said, with enthusiasm and a bit of pride as well.

We couldn’t complete the conversation at that time because a minor disaster interrupted our tete a tete. We happened to be standing in a narrow lane during the course of this conversation and there was this window right overhead. As fate would have it, an inmate of the house (featuring the aforementioned window!) chose this very moment to get sick and vomit, conveniently leaning out of the window to deliver the same! Laws of gravity being what they are, the contents of his stomach, in various stages of digestion, fell down and down and down until this downward descent was interrupted by my friend who was standing in perfect alignment. The poor fellow took it all on himself, so as to say! Looking rather spectacular my friend just stood his ground, the slime dripping off his nose (and ears as well!). “Don’t you have a handkerchief or something?!” I asked the ‘scheming genius’.

“Well you know what it is with us Disaster Management Cells, never wholly prepared for things! But of course we are always learning!”

I couldn’t let the fellow to go on dripping liquefied rice and vegetable soup and specks of green and all that. Ultimately after wrestling a great deal with my thrift, I proffered my own handkerchief to help the guy tidy up himself. Disaster cell or no disaster cell it is always the public that comes to the rescue you see!

Anyway the fallout of this meeting was that this friend of mine called me several times, inviting me to visit his office. Curious about what a disaster cell looks like in action, I went to his office a few days after the snow hit us this year and disrupted everything. I never got to talk to my friend who was busy attending to phone calls all the time in his role as a one-man disaster cell.

“Yes it is the Disastrous Management Cell!” he spoke into the phone in response to some phone call.

I looked up in surprise at this ‘slip’ of tongue. A short while later while responding to another call, he said, “Sir we are experts in disastrous management!” I checked the expression on his face but he didn’t look like he was indulging in any sort of word play.

As I said I never got to talk to my friend, not the friendly chat that I had looked forward to, but I did manage to ask him why he kept saying ‘disastrous’ when he actually meant ‘disaster’.

“So what is the difference?” he asked. I double-checked his face but it was all innocence and ingenuousness!

“Not much in our context!” I said and then went on to explain the difference between the two words so far as the dictionary is concerned.

“Why there was this fellow over the phone who said that our disaster management was absolutely disastrous! You know how hysterical our telephone lines are apt to become with the slightest of rainfall or snow, I couldn’t make out the sentiment accompanying this statement! I assumed the guy was paying us a compliment!” He said (all the while chewing his knuckles!) as I finished explaining that ‘disastrous’ is not the superlative for ‘disaster’.

(Truth is mostly unpalatable…but truth cannot be ignored! Here we serve the truth, seasoned with salt and pepper and a dash of sauce (iness!). You can record your burps, belches and indigestion, if any, at snp_ajazbaba@yahoo.com)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

10 − 1 =