Tuesday, 20 September 2011

No Laughing Matter This!!

Sunday, 18th September, 6:12 pm, Kolkata experienced the highest magnitude earthquake in its history, with a reading of 6.8 on the Richter scale and the epicenter in Sikkim. As for me, I didn't feel a thing at the time. I was busy watching the Liverpool vs Tottenham match, and just around that time, Tottenham had opened the scoring via a Luka Modric stunner. There was a different kind of 'quaking' going on inside me at the time. The way the match had started, things were looking bleak for Liverpool. And thats exactly how it turned out. They lost 4-0. I refuse to comment any further on this....
It was half an hour after the event that I got to know about the earthquake. At that time, I didn't give it much thought. It was only Monday morning when I got to know the full extent of the damage that the earthquake had caused. There has been a lot of damage in Sikkim. Entire highways are still blocked and the conditions are quite bad. Accessibility is a major problem to most of the affected areas.
The sad part is, here in Kolkata, people have been treating the earthquake as a sort of casual experience, like one would treat seeing a meteor shower, or a solar eclipse for that matter. I have even heard people express disappointment at not having felt the tremor! I must admit, when I first heard about it, I too dismissed it as a very minor tremor. The feeling has changed since. I'm relieved that a lot of us didn't feel the tremor, or the effect of the earthquake was not more severe in our city. An earthquake is no joke. It is one of the scariest things one can ever experience, and I hope that we never have to experience it in our lives.
And as for Liverpool, I hope they clean up their act this coming weekend. This week's performance was probably their worst under Kenny Dalglish!

No comments:

Post a Comment