I was intending to write on a theme whose title I had meant to be: Running out of breath. Yet, time is always short; and the Chinese earthquake overtook events.

I am quoting from my book: March of the Evil Empires: English versus the Feudal Languages. Even though I had written the original book far back in 1987, I had made a huge rewriting on to it around 2000.

QUOTE

An earthquake: I was in Delhi, when the Indian state of Gujarat was hit by a severe earthquake. I don’t know the exact number, but it is believed that tens of thousands of people died in the quake, most of them trapped under the buildings. What was apparent was that no one was in charge of any rescue attempt in a concerted and persevering manner. Each day’s report was of more and more buffoonery, with both political leadership as well as the bureaucratic leadership spending time in useless debates and trying to be impressed by the magnitude of the catastrophe. They seemed actually, to be using the time to sharpen their communicative skills; and also sort of leadership-less.

There is, and also was, a disaster management team to handle this sort of things. Forming such a board is easy. But when it comes for the individual members to take the phone and call on the various heads of government departments, including the army chief and demand immediate action, they would definitely develop cold feet. There would be a question of who should call whom, for only certain persons with adequate credentials can call on certain levels of personages. How to address him? Who should respect whom? At the same time, no one would admit to this mental handicap, and would just dilly-dally when the need of the hour is immediate communication and recourse to action.

The whole Gujarat earthquake was a great tragedy; for days on end, no help came. Persons with relatives trapped beneath the buildings, begged and screamed for help, for days, for help that would never come. If the Indian army personnel had just come immediately, and each one of them, just moved one stone at a time, many would have been saved. But, who would talk to the army chief, on a level of equality and dignity and seek a manner to save their fellowmen. And also, another fact remains: which Indian cares for another Indian in dire straits? For, remember that when thousands of Indian women were burned on their husband’s pyre, few Indians were bothered. It remained for the young English District Collectors to get shocked by this abominable practice, and demand the right to interfere with this nonsense religious right of the natives.

Now, it is seen that the Chinese army had done a very commendable job; but, did the common populace have the chance to participate much?

There is a theme connected to links in language in the contrasting events, Indian and Chinese. I mean to bring it up in my Secondary Codes postings.

In this link to the YouTube, Visit YouTube I had made a comment. Even though my comment may smack of an extreme infection of Anglophila, the actuality is different. The comment refers to the general level of communicability possible for people from the English nations, as against that of persons from structured language nations.