By Yuvaraj Nayaghare
It is a madness that came all of a sudden. It is the scene that has been vibrated with suddenness. The results of those scenes have been exposed on newspapers, radios, and televisions.
It is the day assumed to be always scathed. There is the perpetuity of the morning and the evening contained in a day, full of death and the injured. And I used to be detached with information.
Tsunami struck when bullets were being acclaimed.
It came with symptoms prior to a disease. It came with a blow prior to having wounds. It came as a disaster prior to care rather than medicines.
Time has narrowed. Its beauty is not confined to the exposition of every moment and philosophy. Seldom has it shrunk without searching for height. There was news of death in conjunction with two different contexts: waves and earthquakes.
Tsunami waves!
It was in Ache Province of Indonesia.
There had been a challenge of a revolt. There had been a storm of starvation and scarcity. Chased by the addiction to freedom, the inhabitants of Ache had a youthful dream of new territory in their eyes. The meaning of ‘swa’ contained in their word had embraced in that territory.
The earthquake threw its magma there.
There is no single basis for the earth to vibrate. The logic of those who dismiss emotions to be inconsequential is defeated. You heard the voices of the ocean and the moments of tears that were unable to express. Both are the objects consisted only of one form, color and the identity of the world – earthquakes and waves.
Tsunami has appeared with equal meaning and power.
The madness of the ocean always boils in the eyes of humans. I do not say that I have not seen the crowds of ruling people that spread their plethora of desires and dreams of happiness across the river waters. I have met people who have understood the importance being watery by submitting their thousands of dreams to a single touch.
There was news of Tsunami.
Tsunami served as the road to those furnishing statements of witness. Tsunami approached with atrocious songs of sadness. Tsunami surged up in the company of research and interpretation. Who should express sadness to whom? How much river is it to have crossed by catching whose hands?
There is the face of Tsunami only in the margins of ugly questions.
The civilization of water is adjacent to life. Humans have systematically revered water, believing it to be the equal pace of movement and rituals. The drops of water are the flowers and leaves of series and sequences of new mystery and new knowledge.
The wave originated in the core of ocean turns into poisonous and disastrous after being diluted in water. The entire civilization on the beach of the ocean is being demolished every moment. The tumult of cries and sadness are at present mixed in the air, and the vibrated place is coming to a halt.
The predictions in newspapers contradict themselves. Our eyes are accustomed to reading breaking-news data on televisions. They seek refuge in the mass of tears and deaths accumulated every moment.
How terrible is it to meet death by weighing oneself? In other words, there is, in Adam’s apple, a knot of scene of a human who is destined to enter into the mouth of death by weighing himself in the waves of Tsunami.
“Waves came suddenly. I was feeding my twelve-year daughter and a five-year son in the courtyard. I had to live. Daughter was grown up; so, I thought she could take care of herself. I ran holding son in my arms.”
A woman sheds more tears on television than her disaster holds. No one whom she could call her own was there. Her sadness became the line of news after Tsunami had swallowed the whole family.
Despite the fact that life gets entangled in the maze of meanings and perspectives, it does not carry the meaning other than the interpretation of time. Some pictures drive me mad at a time when sympathy cannot be delivered. Humans know that it is not a destiny to receive continuous news of deaths.
This news is unbearable at a place where the green light is on after the indication of the extinction of life. I am suffering from the wounds of humans who could not restrict the disaster due to the simultaneous earthquake and the storm. Every day, we are eager to express something after being numbed.
Villages have been inundated.
Cities have been swept.
As a result of these two, millions of people died. We, the spectators of the time when desires have been defeated by the disaster, are moving our steps towards the nothingness after lacking in fingers to count corpses. Death possesses only one rank. There may not have been any faces who could remember the experience of being swallowed by death – those innocent minds which were viewing the rising sun.
Whatever it is, it is absolutely wrong for a human to die.
Televisions are competing to reveal the wounds of corpses. Newspapers are making a long list of deaths. Radios are showing their pride to reveal the increasing number of deaths.
This a great disaster for those who forget the dream of eyes to imagine the next day’s meal.
Waves are surging up.
Trees are being continuously swept. Houses have been submerged after the increase of water level. The crowd of people watching the waves rising in rivers or seas with curiosity and mystery was swept when their desire to watch them from a short distance could not be satiated. Humans were swept like leaves. The beliefs of homes and dependence disappeared more quickly in water than human beings.
There was a smile of cry in the sad speech of death.
A couple walking arm in arm in the market was swept by the waves of Tsunami. It instantly floated in the form of corpses. There were corpses scattered everywhere. There was a boisterous laughter of a fall at those who always won. The corpses that were scattered everywhere did not ignore the security and request to the nation. It is a wonder as to how much those in charge of inspection understood the state of numb and abominable scene.
Those destined to die died.
This is not the only conclusion. Absolutely not! If we suppose it to be the final conclusion, why should we ponder over for being human, for what purpose and how long?
A green and fresh crop has been swept.
A crop needs the sediment of clay; however, this does not go with the requirement. What will happen to the crop ready to a harvest if beaten by hailstones?
This is an enigma worthy of a discovery. The hungry sees the moon as the embodiment of a chapati. The thirsty feels tears to be water.
Tsunami is only waves.
The civilization of humans linked with the land has been bedridden after having deep wounds. Although it is hard to have a solace, there is a truth of one’s existence because of the presence of those weeping. There is a scene everywhere betraying the disaster at the empty moment of deaths.
The television broadcasts this speech – “Father and mother have been swept away.”
A young girl survived after being trapped in a tree for three days. This existence is not different from and more original than stones in beaches. A problem is dancing in a tune in that muddy beach.
A man observed the list of dead humans. No, I do not admit. There were more deaths at another shelter away from the observing face. This is the road to the annihilation of civilization. This is the way a culture becomes “nirbikar”.
Greetings to the Tsunami!
There will be a gradual change. Sociology, economics, or law will under changes in that market of deaths, cities, and villages. It requires a new vision to see the hope on the face of society and that dim stain.
There is a different logic of those who have been weeping. Those who have heard have formulated their own logic. In the midst of these, those flowers that have not been offered to the dead have continuously been floating in the muddy waves of the ocean.
Everything has turned into clay.
There is a perpetual duet love-song between draught and starvation in every aspect of life. The roar of being and the pride of being alive have arrogantly surfaced differently. The only cloud of frustration hinting at emptiness occasionally shrouds the sky. It is a routine in the surrounding world of Ache only to shout and cry looking at the sky.
A plethora of goods were swept away by waves. A few could form the sediment. Colorful masts of ships flew into the sky. Everyone engulfed into waves aimed at catching the masts, but how to reach the bottom in water? That is the ultimate mystery. The boast and the claim of reaching the bottom are spread everywhere. A procession of the dead was discovered.
A blind drenched to the bones coming out of the submerged home remarks: “My glasses have been swept way.” Why did I become alive? I hear all hospitals have been swept away by waves. Where can I get glasses?
He survived with thick glasses. His courtyard was his world of day and night. He used to live on shells from the ocean. That suitable life turned into nothingness by being immersed in wounds. The home was a poodle. The ocean from distance collected in his courtyard.
Life turned into the ravine of misfortune that could not be jumped over.
There is the scene of entire destruction. Everyone alive is enveloped with his or her own sadness, frustration and dream. There is agony in that fearful world in which a person searches for himself or herself in the piles of corpses, forgetting the beating of his own heart. To search oneself means to give a help to one’s family and kith and kin. I can see that there is the absence of this human voice.
There are principles of religions. There is an old system entangled in the life styles. But, it is hardly a scientific thought to be entangled in the maze. I guess, Tsunami revitalized the power of scrutiny in the meanings of the religion.
An earthquake struck, and the ocean surged up.
It is slightly different from usual suicides and the series of oppression committed everyday in the world. The dead did not commit crimes. They were not pondering over different books of philosophy than living a lonely life.
Opening small cottages built to show the sunrise and sunset, a Thai woman, forgetting to cry, points out a Phuket resort raged to pieces. The reporter of B. B. C. followed to hear her voice of sadness. She failed to utter neither any sound nor any cry.
Seeing the sea waves, a toddler ran towards them. She has survived with the moment of his disappearance in her heart. How can she utter at live-broadcast on the B. B. C.? Which word should she speak without fear? Which pictures should she depict in the order? She bears the wounds of losing everything in her heart. She has no medicines. It is not an insignificant work to rekindle the walks of life and sketch the map of civilization. The sound of one’s own defeat has found its shelter in his or her heart.
It is a victory after the heart has won even though everyone is a loser. I have guessed that the destructive waves of Tsunami have certainly brought about a change in thoughts of the world. The value of humans should be established in every generation and under every spire of the rule.
Humans carry the wounds of crying. Isn’t the bedridden and wounded civilization the only fury of the ocean? Some interpretations surface automatically. Nowadays it is interpreted that the covering of some significant questions will eliminate the roots of stupidities of human beings.
“Mother has gone to fetch water.”
A small girl believes.
There is a different reality beyond that belief. Her mother has been enlisted in the mass of the dead far away from there after being swept away by waves. Tsunami waves will become a common event to a reality and an illusion for some time. Life will be assumed to be bound to sustain as a face between a truthful life and an illusion for some time.
The speech of compassion and sympathy becomes numb after seeing the sequence of extermination, defeat and destruction everywhere. The interpretation becomes an immediate want after finding the pile of destruction when development comes to a halt everywhere.
A deaf coming out from mud interprets the meaning of noises. His misfortunes substantiates that the splints of fear and the terror are identical. In other words, some might have been covered under mud. Might have they been dead? There is the vibration of these and such questions. It was also his entreaty.
“My aid of hearing has been swept. I am dead.”
Whatever is spoken by those inculcating in greed, there is nothing other than helplessness. It becomes difficult for the mechanism to make a new world dynamic after being deprived suddenly of the land and the swallow of the meal. It takes some time to have the expectation of buildings, gardens and parks, making greenery and pleasant beaches of the ocean.
Those buried under mud should have justice.
Then, it will herald the beginning of a new creation. Tall, slender and beautiful trunks of coconut should erect again. Those who spent their illustrious moments of life by engaging in their business in the morning and evening underwent the doomsday of waves in their routine life. Can those people who commit the lines of philosophy to memory interpret the meaning of life struggles?
This is the tune of nature. The color of the old file used by environmentalists to speak has worn off. The improved and reasoned claims in the worn off principles have not been successful to dry the eyelids of the inhabitants of Ache. Those witnessing the results demanded that they beg for alms.
The single sound of the dead floated in waves with the demand that their corpses be buried in land.
Those who swam across demanded: “We should possess homes.”
Those who were swept away in waves demanded: “We need medicines to use in our wounds.”
Those who survived despite being suffocated sea waves demanded: “Our lost members should be identified.”
There are plenty of demands and needs after the attack of Tsunami. The company of the earthquake and the sea storm is an intensive moment of knowing humans and be known to other humans. Humans should have learned good lessons from the dialogues of Tsunami that there were once a village, city and pleasant smells in life.
This is not the time for only intolerance. The spirit that possesses the vitality to rise in revolt has dried up.
It is absolutely correct to be without any resolution.
The event of using elephants to repair the damaged houses and huts is a good lesson to a mind depended upon machines. There are people who ponder over the results of the deaths due to the completion to see the water. Those who slept in embrace did not rise. Those taking meals could not swallow their gulf. Those seeing themselves in mirrors did not have complete vision of themselves. All kissing, sex, and consumption went incomplete.
Tsunami is not all the name of doomsday.
Some school boys and girls come around my house and remind me: “Feel the wounds of Tsunami as your own wounds.”
They spread their arms hoping for some kind of help. They depicted the picture of disaster. Those young boys and girls voted against starvation, wars, disasters, and conflicts.
I was impressed by their campaign in support of human beings. The noblest principle is that humans are active in support of humans, and they are not quiet. It is better not to dare to dry the tears of humans with machines. This is established under the assumption that these reasonings are based on the voices of young girls and boys in support of the victims of Tsunami.
There are original movements in every corner of the globe. The journey of human relations is very old despite the fact that there have been diversities in human thoughts, culture, language, character, planning and perspectives. The relationship of humans has been dear, cordial and original in the shine of that antiquity. This relationship gives those who have faith a profound meaning and teaches them to live.
Oh, Tsunami!
Humans have always had such addresses from the age of jungle to the age of Cyber. Destructions and disasters have always attacked them. All of them forgot their own faces in their arrogance. Everyone contains the most part of a human. The result of Tsunami is the result of pollution, experiment, unsystematic exploitation and the tendency to harm the nature. It is the most essential to bring about a change in the reasoning of human beings. Or else the attacks of doomsday will increase and become rampant.
I am the man to express condolence to those deaths of some two hundred thousand. Humans are important for this beautiful world.
Apocalypse is not another name for Tsunami.
[Translation of the essay ‘Pralayako arko naan Tsunami Haina’ from his Madan Award winning collection Ek Haatko Taali. Trans. Mahesh Paudyal]
Yubaraj Nayaghare (b. 1969) is an essayist of high repute. Recipient of almost all the reputed literary awards including Madan Puraskar (for Ek Haatko Tali), he has dominated the sphere of Nepali essays and travel writing for the past two decades. His major works include essay collections Samabedanaka Swarharu, Muhurtako Waripari, Mukhundoko Man, Kathmandulai Korra, Ek Hatko Tali, Ghamko Chumban, Hariyo Rahadani, Aunla Aunlama Australia, Aamil, Dollarko Diary and many others, his last work being Tanakhwa. He lives in Kathmandu with his family, though he is originally from Ilam, a district in Eastern Nepal.]