The day after yesterday

Sunday 26th December 2004, 06:40

I woke up, shaken out of deep slumber. "Where am I?," I thought to myself. I was not thinking clear. Someone was shaking my bed. I looked around, dazed, trying to focus. I jumped off the bed, fists clenched, ready to take on my assailant. But no one was there in my room. I must have been dreaming. I sat on the bed, pulse pounding. Suddenly I felt the bed shaking again. "I shouldn't have stayed awake till 1am watching TV, I am hallucinating," I thought to myself. One more shake. This time around, I knew that it was not a hallucination. The earth was shaking.

I was thinking clear now. I looked around, grabbed my specs and rushed out of my room. I found my mom and dad rushing out of their rooms as well. The clock on the wall was swinging from side to side. We rushed out of the apartment. "Don't use the lift," my mom told us. We started climbing down the stairs.

One floor down, I paused a bit and caught a glimpse inside one of the apartments. The door was wide open, everyone had fled except for the old lady of the house who was in the 'pooja' room praying. Her prayers had not been shaken by the quake. "One more floor to go," I thought to myself.

We reached the ground floor and rush out of the apartment complex. There were people everywhere, it looked like a big carnival except that many were in their pajamas. People were talking excitedly on their mobiles and to each other.

After waiting outside for about 15 minutes we decided that it was time we went back inside.

After coming back home, I switched on the TV and watched reports pour in. The quake originated from Indonesia where it measured over 8.9 on the Richter scale. Places like Andaman & Nicobar, Sri Lanka and parts of the eastern coast of India (Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu) were hit by tidal waves that were triggered as a result of this quake. Over 500 people dead in Sri Lanka, with most of Colombo submerged under water. 108 people dead in Chennai as tidal waves, 50 feet high, washed away those sleeping in makeshift huts in slums that were scattered along the coastline of the city.

"It makes you 'feel small'," said someone who witnessed the huge tidal waves rushing in.

Sometimes, I think, we take life for granted that we never realize how insignificant we, as humans, really are in the grand scheme of things. We build stone walls around ourselves and think we are "secure". But it just takes a second for those walls to be broken to bits.