Early estimates indicate that over 29 people died and many more were injured when a cyclone, named Fani, hit India’s east coast on Saturday, 3 May last week. The death toll is expected to rise slightly. (The cyclone was more furious then the one 20 years ago which cost more than 10,000 lives).
This is one of the biggest storms to hit the country in ten years. Winds of 125 miles an hour battered the country mercilessly. More than 12 million people had to be evacuated and trains had to be chained to the tracks in case they toppled over.
The storm then headed towards Bangladesh. This disaster is in the wake of the floods in Indonesia and the storms in Mozambique the previous week.
We are only talking about the disasters which happened in the east. But other parts of the world too have not escaped natural calamities.
The havoc caused by the heavy rains in the wake of, and in accompaniment of, Hurricane Harvey had brought America, the world’s most powerful nation, to its knees.
The incredible sight of Houston, America’s fourth largest city, submerged in deep waters makes you wonder how helpless man is against the wrath of nature.
But then the culprit is man himself. These tsunamis, mudslides and floods are Mother Nature’s cry for help in retaliation to the flogging we humans subject her to.
I would like to reiterate here what I have said before in this column – stop belching out poisonous gases in the atmosphere or else our posterity will have no earth to live on.
Dinesh Sheth
Newbury Park, Ilford
