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3 September 2005
The pot calling the kettle black
Only a few cynical minds could ever have envisioned the graphic cataclysm that is being played out in New Orleans. Perhaps Katrina may not ever compare to that great tragedy on the 26th of December 2004 which bespoke of moments such as now when the number of lives lost was beyond reckoning and beyond imagination -- some claim hundreds while some thousands, the former are almost sure to be wrong and the latter would love to be wrong -- but a time will appear not too far off in our lives when they will both be mentioned aside each other in the anthology of great tragedies that befell our generation.All of a sudden it does not seem to matter that the last test between England and Australia will start in less than a week's time at The Oval with "everything to play for" or that Michael Owen's move to Newcastle is kicking up quite a storm in England or that China and the U.S. have still not come to an understanding regarding textile sanctions. It troubles me that news of Sania Mirza's progressing through to the next stage of the US Open is making more news in India than the woes of Hurricane Katrina, that Rediff seems more content in delivering tips on investing for women than in covering Katrina threadbare, that the Hindustan Times should lambast and lampoon the United States for Katrina even before they begin to write about its trail of carnage and continuing misery. Words hardly matter now but I feel somewhat at unease knowing that none seemed to have come from the powers that be in Delhi -- neither of condolence nor of solidarity -- I can only rationalise by saying that a Katrina in New Orleans is only as internally relevant to them as the Bombay floods were to the United States, never mind the dissonance in the scale of impact and the lives lost, never mind our 'moral superiority', our infinite capacity for compassion and commiseration.
