Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Before & After
Couldn't believe my eyes. One backhand sweep of the hand and the table is wiped clean. Places where people eat, slept, played, dreamt of the next million yen …all gone. There is a beautiful application by New York Times which shows the before and after of the japan Tsunami.
Slide the blue button in the pics on that page to the left and right and the devastation really hits you. Roads, runways, all gone. Dirt tracks left like tracks of tears across the barren landscape which till yesterday was a thriving metropolis with real estate pricing going through the roof.
I am enclosing a couple of pics below for those who cannot run the application but the reality is more stark on the NY times site , so would advise visiting it. The Left and right sides ARE THE SAME PLACE just 7 days apart………
And these people thought they were so lucky buying a beach front property in Sendai…….
The runways are now dirt tracks……
These are all areas which were bustling with activities. People rushing to
The Tsunami was the consequence of an underwater earthquake of the 8.9 magnitude on the Richter Scale. This is an almost cataclysmic event.
Friends, everyone in Mumbai I meet is now talking 
When the Latur earthquake happened in 1993 with a force of 6.3 on the Richter scale, Mumbai suddenly woke upto the fact that we were in a moderately high earthquake zone (Zone 3). A lot of hullaboo was made politicians vented their hot air, Govt machinery made noise about how all future buildings need to ascribe to a code and builders suddenly started to put words like "seismic resistant" buildings on their brochures.
How many of these buildings are really seismic resistant ? Is yours ? ( click here to visit a site which explains earthquake resistant design in quite a simple manner)
A few years on and its all forgotten. We have gone back to our money hungry ways waiting for the next "pralay" ( Armageddon) to hit us. All of us have ignored the warnings of eminent persons like Earthquake geologist V. Subramanyan who has warned that Malabar Hill, Cumballa Hill and Worli Hill are located in a relatively weak zone. He was commenting on new skyscrapers, some of them 50-60 storeyed high, coming up in the island city.
"The quakes have been knocking at our doors fairly regularly. This should be all the more reason to keep an upper limit for high rise buildings here,'' he observed.
No one is listening, not the planners, not the builders and not the suckers who pay slave day and night to buy 1 sq ft of space in this overcrowded concrete jungle.
Folks, I am a realist and know that I cannot do anything to change the denial mode we all are in about our bad situation, but my only request to you is tomorrow morning when you see your neighbour, smile at him, look at him deeply, pause for a heartbeat to understand his humanity and dreams……..since for all you know the next Tsunami is only a minute away and one eyeblink later he may no longer be there.
For more articles like this one , please visit http://theindipatriot.blogspot.com
let me introduce myself:
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I am an person of Indian origin residing in Mumbai who feels that the time has come to speak up or be silent forever. We all see movies like Rang De Basanti or Lage Raho Munnabhai and after walking out of theatre for the next couple of days the effect hangs like a halo around us. A few days later we go back to our old ways. This is my way of keeping the spirit of India alive.
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As they say" 100 mein se 99% beimaan phir be India hai Mahaan"
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My Mission Statement is:
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I am sending you this mail since you have at some time or the other sent me a joke, an interesting article or some other little snippet or or some friend who has liked my articles has reffered you to me or at the very least you have been a CC on such an article forwarded to me so I feel this may be of interest to you.
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I have started a blog under the name indipatriot and am sending you this article and the link to the blog http://theindipatriot.blogspot.com where you can read this and other articles. I would also request you to send me articles and other things you would like me to publish on this blog from jokes to spiritual articles all comments are welcome. The email address for sending articles to is theindipatriot@rediffmail.com If you feel that this blog is not to your taste and do not wish to receive updates about the same, please send an email to the same address and we shall remove you from the mailing list.
Disclaimer This article is my personal opinion and is not meant to offend or hurt any person or any body of people. The matter is drawn from public domain and no copyright is knowingly transgressed. If any topic is found to be objectionable by you for any reason whatsoever, please do leave a comment and I will be glad to include a clarification in my followups.
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