Calamity numbs...

Calamity strikes and leaves you so numb. For most of us, we saw nature's fury on July 26 here in Mumbai. The recent earthquake in J & K, Pak and Afghanistan has left villages completely destroyed. What is most heart wrenching is the number of children dying...not because of the earthquake but its aftermath! With no roof on their heads and rains splashing all around, the number of children succumbing to the cold is slowly losing count.

Can you imagine small children shivering in the cold, as relatives and strangers dig out their parents and bury them elsewhere? Villages dont have shovels to dig out bodies and food to eat! Mumbai reached out alright....but because it was possible to do so. Villages along the border have been swiftly alienated with no relief and no help. As it is Kashmir seems to be a forgotten state and this adds to it. Meanwhile Prez Musharraf is offering aid to India while Pak is losing citizens by the thousands and their PM says, 'I am ruling a graveyard!'

I am posting excerpts from the article by Muzamil Jaleel in the Indian Express on Sunday.

Cold, hungry and drained, hundreds of villagers spent the last two days burying their dead. And if nature’s fury hasn’t abated, after the quake, came the rains—six children shivered to death in the open.

Everywhere here, they talk of the dead in numbers. Guvalta, a small village, has already buried 200 and is still counting. Except for Army personnel, a few groups of young men from Sopore and a dozen BSF men, nobody’s arrived here with relief. The state government did send four policemen to take down the death toll but they, too, skipped this village.

Two dozen stretchers, each with a body covered with shards of cloth, are carried by groups of men so tired that for them, it’s a struggle not to trip. As we near Udoosa, the stench of death gives it away.

Entire families are gone. Habibullah Mir carries the body of his son. In his wake, come the bodies of his two brothers, carried on stretchers.

Grief has been temporarily pushed aside by the needs of survival. As father and son point to their rubble, a frail woman, Muneera, walks by. Behind her, villagers carry the body of her nine-year-son Shahbaaz Nazir. ‘‘He was studying in the Army school,’’ says the mother before she begins to cry.

Moulvi Manzoor, Imam of the village mosque, is furious. ‘‘Let these people come to ask for votes. We will show them,’’ he says. ‘‘Our children will die of hunger and cold. Why doesn’t anybody help?’’

And as we move closer to the LoC, the level of devastation too increases. The next village is Chakri. Here 10 villagers were killed. Survivors have nothing but the open sky and the clothes they wear. Across the Jhelum, on the right flank of the road, is Dulanja. Here, there is no sign of life. Of either the living or the dead.

Exhausted, we stop at Udoosa, the last village on Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road before it pierces through the LoC. Here, seven villagers have died. ‘‘When the road was reopened, we thought finally it is our time to be lucky. We didn’t know what was to follow,’’ says Tawseef Ahmad. The only consolation is the news from across. ‘‘When we hear what has happened just miles away across the Kaman post, this seems like nothing. This road leads to hell.’’