Terrorizing tremors:

Daydreaming is an enjoyable ‘art’ that need not be learnt and can definitely be practiced by anybody effortlessly (provided you have the time for it!). Am quite a daydreamer myself. It’s highly entertaining to simulate some situation in your mind and to make yourself go through it. Although daydreaming has it’s own problems (if you are wondering what they are, ask some daydreamer you know!!), it cannot be denied that it’s enjoyable to indulge in!

I had been to the Marina beach last Sunday evening and was gazing at the sea, munching a roasted American sweet corn. Don’t make any mistakes…this corn is from Salem and not from the USA as its name misleadingly implies. ‘American sweet Corn’ is a branding done by some of the beach side marketing strategists.

Its always is fun to just look around at all the people and activities on the beach. The baji walas (If you haven’t tasted the bajis on the beaches of Chennai, then you’ve missed something important in life…yummy!!!) with their stalls, decorated with chili curtains, the tiny Mary-go-rounds for kids, the key chain vendors with their key chains emitting a dull blue glow in the darkness, everything adds color to the place (I now think about these with the fondness that comes naturally for pleasant things that have been lost forever. There will soon be a new set of people out there, of course!)

I started wondering what would happen if some creature like Godzilla happened to just pop its head out of the sea suddenly and start chasing the whole lot of people on the beach. I was trying to figure out the various ways in which each of these people would try and safe guard themselves (not that there are many ways…running for your life is the best bet!). It was soon time to leave and the Godzilla daydream was lost in the grinding routine of the following week.

Woke up at 8.30 yesterday morning. It was a typical lazy, sunny Sunday morning until the television was switched on. I didn’t feel any tremors. Nobody at home or in the neighborhood did. All the same, it truly was scary to watch and hear the stuff that was told on TV. Can you imagine? There are people who were completely in harmony with life until they or their loved ones got washed away into the sea on this ill-fated Sunday!

Just close your eyes and visualize the sea coming towards you, engulfing you and taking you in with all its might. There have been un-suspecting, health conscience people out jogging/walking. There have been friends meeting up and playing on the beach. There have been fishermen and women. There have been people who lived on the shores and ran some stalls in the evenings, perhaps. These people may not have been entirely happy with life (very few of us are for that matter), but each would definitely have had some plans for the rest of yesterday (at least), leave alone the plans they might have had for the rest of their lives. Worse still, Can you imagine someone dear to you just vanishing from your life one fine morning? It’s just too much of a shock to take (I think).

Many ‘Thanks’ to the Godzilla named ‘Tsunamis ‘!! The following is an interesting site that provides info’ on earthquakes with some animations. Do check it out! http://www.pbs.org/wnet/savageearth/earthquakes/

It even provides info on the Waves of destruction-Tsunamis!! Here is an extract

Depending on the geometry of the seafloor warping that first generated the waves, tsunami attacks can take different forms. In certain cases, the sea can seem at first to draw a breath and empty harbors, leaving fish flopping on the mud. This sometimes draws the curious to the shoreline and to their deaths, since the withdrawing of the sea is inevitably followed by the arrival of the crest of a tsunami wave. Tsunamis also flood in suddenly without warning. Tsunami waves usually don't curve over and break, like Hawaiian surf waves. Survivors of tsunami attacks describe them as dark "walls" of water. Impelled by the mass of water behind them, the waves bulldoze onto the shore and inundate the coast, snapping trees like twigs, toppling stone walls and lighthouses, and smashing houses and buildings into kindling.

Whatever said and done, the fact remains that earthquakes cannot be prevented!!

Although ours is not a region prone to seismic activities, this is the second time in the recent past (to the best of my knowledge) that we’ve been badly hit by the tremors.Bygones are bygones. From now on, the best thing to do would be to predict it (if we can) and be prepared. The following link takes you to a page that tells you how you can be prepared.http://earthquake.usgs.gov/faq/prepare.html

Lets just focus on how we can make things better (read ‘safer’) for everybody before there’s another one of these terrorizing tremors that could again leave us all ‘shaken’ in more ways than one!