The Cost of a Hurricane

I was in the Andaman Islands with my husband and children for the last 10 days or so. For us, traveling is more addiction and passion than a pastime and, as a family, we've been around 5 continents via plane, train, cruise ship, automobile and various other means of transport including cycle "vans," camels and elephants!

I'm beginning to digress even before I've begun. To get back to the point, I love the Andaman Islands and keep returning to them every couple of years. I have a visceral connection to the Bay of Bengal and these gentle, hilly, palm-tree laden, rich-green drops of land bobbing in the Bay's distinctive pista-coloured waters hold a special attraction for me. Every visit back confirms their beauty remains unsurpassed by anywhere else I've been.

The first time I went back to the Islands after the big South Asian tsunami happened on Boxing Day of 2004, I was solar-plexused by the scope of the destruction I saw all around me. Six years and three more visits later, I can still see many places where what was once land is now a permanent salt marsh.

This brings me to the cost of the damage that a hurricane causes on average.

A couple of years ago, Aila came and went while I was vacationing in Europe. I heard from family, of course, of the “never-before-this” force of the winds. I saw friends’ status updates on Facebook about the hundreds of trees that toppled, verandahs that crumbled and people who were felled by Aila. I read reports on the Internet about the swathe of destruction Aila wreaked on villages that happened to dwell on its way.

But I wasn’t there when it happened. Nothing happened to my home or people I knew. Therefore, despite the fact that I made all the right noises, Aila didn’t really impinge on me.

When we came back, we saw remnants of Aila’s demolition work in the left-over stumps and branches of so many trees that had, since my childhood, stood guard on the side of the roads we took. We donated old clothes for Aila victims and paid an extra sum on our club bills when asked. We heard from our maids about the flooding of their homes.

We heard; we sympathized; we murmured our understanding of their anguish. But we didn’t understand. We weren’t them or theirs and it hadn’t happened to us or ours.

Then, a couple of days ago, this gentleman who has a mission in The Netherlands and in Florida came to visit me. Of and on, over the last 15 years, I’ve been commissioned by him to write publicity material for his mission. This time, he brought pictures to show me. He had hundreds of photographs of the Sunderbans villages that had been mangled by Aila’s show of power.

Dozens of dead cattle, half submerged in mud; shocked, vacant faces of those who had lost their already meager all; a beautiful water-body where there obviously should have been land; a house that had been washed away several hundred meters until it hit a bank still standing intact but at an awkward angle—the people inside the house were found drowned when the house was discovered several days later.

Looking at those pictures, the cost of the damage that a natural disaster like the south asian tsunami or a hurricane causes on average finally came home to me.

Aila came and went in a few hours. The full extent of her devastation has become visible only now. It will be years before those who’ve lost land, homes and livestock can be rehabilitated.

Those of us in the city who have short memories and shorter tempers rant and rave about a fresh onslaught of refugees from villages and the impossible pressure they have put on the already overburdened infrastructure of our city.

We talk about the government machinery and its vote-bank politics that lets hawkers take over every inch of free space in the city.

We talk about the growing number bodies sleeping on the foot-paths and wrinkle our noses as we walk faster past a new shanty town and complain about the exponential rate at which the poor propagate.

Aila has all but faded from our memories. She will, however, impact all of us for a long, long time. The South Asian tsunami and its effects are no longer daily conversation for the literati. The scars it left are still visible to those who want to see.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS

For some reason, I’ve been ruminating the truth about cats and dogs today.

Perhaps my canine thoughts owe their origin to Asterix (my Jack Russel Terrier, son of my heart if not my womb) who is, I know for sure, pining at home in our absence as my husband and I spend two weeks in the Andaman islands.

Maybe our frequent conversations about Asterix and his antics (we're missing him too!) make my thoughts stray to the feline because his primary day-job seems to be to keep our existence totally free of the neighbourhood cats and crows.

He takes his job very seriously and at various times of the day, he can be seen tearing from one verandah to another, growling and barking and lunging and generally posturing to be scarier than his 7kg body could possibly be—all because some intrepid cat or crow has dared to breach the invisible boundary into what he has designated to be his territory.

My feline thoughts could also be because of our recent visit to Istanbul—a city that seems to belong more to cats than to humans. Whatever the reason, I’m reminded today of a ginger, tiger-striped little cat who was waiting outside my apartment door one night many years ago.

It was late in the evening in Athens, Georgia, where I lived and taught at the time as I worked on my PhD as a Graduate Student. I lived in this off-campus housing estate comprised mostly of students and other poor folk of the community who couldn’t afford real houses.

So this mini tiger-cat was waiting outside my door when I came in. It was late fall and the last yellow leaves were on the ground already, waiting for my weekend tryst with the broom and trash-can. Although it was my 4th oncoming winter in the US, I still wasn’t used to the dreary, drizzly, gray and depressing months of the winter. I shivered as I stuck my key into the door, but before I could get in, this cat walked in as if it owned the apartment.

He walked around the entire flat (not that it was more than handkerchief size anyway) as if he had all the time to take stock. He surveyed my bathroom, my kitchen, my bedroom and looked gravely at himself in the full length mirror of the walk-in closet as I hung my coat. Apparently, my sense of hygiene, neatness, interior decoration, culinary taste and general lifestyle satisfied him.
He stayed.

I like to think that I let him stay, but that’s not really the way it was.

Through those winter months, he chose when to grace my lap with his presence; when to allow me to pick him up; when to purr at me and lick my hands with his rough tongue; when to curl up next to my body under the comforter.

But I, being human, thought he was mine. I bought him a litter-box and tins of cat food and told my friends at O’Malley’s on Friday nights that I had to go home because “my cat’s waiting for me.” And for that entire winter, he was.

Then one spring evening, I came home and as I let myself in, he let himself out. I never saw him again.

And now there’s Asterix, so undeniably, so completely, so totally mine. His entire existence revolves around me. His entire being trembles with excitement when I come home. His entire universe is suspended when I leave in the morning. If I didn’t say another kind word to him for the rest of my life, for the rest of his life he would still adore me.

I love Asterix.
I still think of the tiger-cat with awe.

You’re now thinking about the point of this post. I don’t know if there truly is a point, or if there is any 'truth' to the truth about cats and dogs, but I've heard many humans in my life classify themselves as cat-people or dog-people.

I'd like to ask those humans--what makes you a cat person or a dog person? Can you really know if you’re a cat or a dog? Are you really a dog who would like to be thought of as a cat? Or are you a cat brainwashed to think you should be a dog?

Whatever you are, you have to first recognize yourself.
Then you have to admit to yourself that you are meant to be what you are.
Then you have to allow yourself to be what you are.
Then you have to forgive yourself for being what you are.
Then you have to like what you are.
Then you have to be proud of what you are.

Then, and only then, can you fulfill your potential truth--cat or dog or both.

And talking about Asterix, watch this space for a video of him as a puppy killing his first ball!