It’s now nearly
a fortnight since the flash floods devastated the north Indian state of
Uttarakhand leaving a trail of endless sufferings and indomitable courage.
Torrential rains and cloudbursts led to the flash floods the fury of which was
beyond our human imagination. The floods swept away or swallowed up anything
that came its way—pilgrims and tourists; cottages, houses and buildings; guest
houses and hotels; huge chunks of land mass and roads; hills and hilly tracks
and the temples and even the sacred idols in this holy state of the Char Dham Yatra pilgrimage. After the rescue of more than 100000 pilgrims
thousands are still trapped and missing. While the official death toll has been
pegged at around 1000 sources say it could be beyond 10000 when you account for
the fact that thousands of missing persons have not returned still. Mother
Nature punished her greedy children one more time in such a telling manner that
the governments and the people of our planet earth better stop and ponder
before embarking on the next folly.
Thousands got
trapped and stranded in various tricky and inaccessible nooks and corners of
this hilly state—a natural paradise ever increasingly compromised by human
greed in the forms of lobbies and coteries involving an unholy nexus of politicians,
bureaucrats, businessmen, builders and brokers. Questions of Eco-zone sensitivity and ecology guidelines always get relegated against such overpowering greed.
It’s no secret that millions of
sinners in this great country throng temples, holy places and sacred waterways
in a desperate bid to wash away their sins and you can see their desperation
when you get pushed, sidestepped and manhandled while standing in any queue for
any temple or holy places. It looks like the incorrigible sinners try to
absolve their sins so that they can go back to commit more sins in their daily
life and come back again creating a vicious circle of vice and virtue. This desperation translates into the 'business' desperation to cash on. We like
it or not, the Uttarakhand devastation is another classic example of man’s
folly and Nature’s wrath. 
While the
inimitable Indian politicians of all hues and colors hankered for garnering
credit—the most sought after commodity in any form of Indian activity—for
providing relief and rescue for the stranded pilgrims the trapped ones
continued to suffer indescribable misery of starvation and death, and the
soldiers of the armed forces launched the biggest rescue mission in Indian
history braving the furious weather and risking their own lives. The unsung
heroes of Uttarakhand have made thousands of helicopter sorties rescuing more
than hundred thousand stranded so far and they have displayed full skill,
bravery and courage while getting them to the helicopters through makeshift
bridges over rifts, rope-ways from inaccessible hilltop roads and plain mountain
climbing. Few days back the armed forces—prominently the Ind-Tibetan Border
Police, the Army, the Air Force—rescued 4500 people with 330 helicopter sorties
in a day making this the biggest chopper rescue mission of the world so far. 
Can you imagine
in this modern age of communication people have died in thousands failing to
find roads to travel, for the lack of shelter in adverse weather conditions and
not finding enough water or food. In this saga you hear tales of good
Samaritans coming to their help providing free food and water, and also of
cheats and thugs robbing and overcharging the hapless masses.
The brave
soldiers fighting the immense human tragedy have had their share of tragedy
too. Twenty excellent pilots of the Indian Air Force engaged continuously in
the rescue mission got killed tragically when the helicopter carrying them to
transit camp crashed in Uttarakhand. India
cried for these martyrs belonging to almost every state of the country with
three of them from Maharashtra and Mumbai. We
salute the Heroes.
With the rescue
operations scheduled to end in a day or two the authorities are trying hard to
prevent the possible outbreak of epidemic as it has been a mammoth task to
cremate all the bodies of the victims. Unfortunately, the blame game continues
too, with the met office insisting it had issued rare kind of weather warnings
for stopping and evacuating the pilgrims, and the state authorities denying it
stoutly.
Granted we are
always at the mercy of Mother Nature and we are helpless against the kind of
immense calamities that can confront us anytime. But we can definitely correct
ourselves to help our Mother in a more meaningful way and possibly prevent more
Uttarakhands from unfolding in near future.
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