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| black sunday and television |
| Sunday, January 30, 2005 |
On sunday,the 26th of december 2004,something happened that shook the whole world.It was a sequel to something else that happened in some part of the world.It was the tsunami or tidal quake that struck the coasts of India,lanka and indonesia.It was sequel to a quake, measuring 9 on the richter scale,that struck parts of indonesia.
I was told that a light tremor was experienced in madras,where i live.But i had no clue of it since i was asleep then.Sharply @ 9,news channels flashed with the news that sea water had inundated parts of chennai.That too happened at 645,when i was sleeping.Minutes later,or rather,seconds later,news flashed that many other coastal districts of tamilnadu were affected.More information was coming in and i was told that sea water had washed the sands in besant nagar beach and in marina.I could see the sight live on TV.The marina which was rocking.clam,serene,peaceful till yesterday had now become a cesspool.I myself went to the lesser known tiruvanmiyur beach to witness the situation.Thankfully there was no danger.
The channel wars came into light at this moment when every news channel vied with one another to cover the tragedy.Sun news began talking of relief operations when the wave had not ceased yet.Time and again they showed the son of a former TMC leader talking ofrelief operations on war-footing.
The casualties came to light at around 2 pm.Again channels went into battle field to find out who found the most number of casualties.While aajtak reported 1072 in tamilnadu,ndtv reported 1114.Doordarshan which is normally known to lag behind,reported a still higher figure @ 1567.All at the same time.Also while aajtak and ndtv brought out the same pictures of people running in the marina,and other coastal districts again and again,DD went a step forward and showed the "pleasant smelling" coovum river of madras flowing with sea water.The reason for a difference in the number of casualties reported is probably to make mountains out of beach castles.If the number of casualties is 1000,and if channels report 1500,they can probably extract the extra money that came in the name of relief fund.
At the end,i could only wonder what a day it had been!Horror began to flood my mind when i heard the news.I began visualising some day in the future when people like swapan dasgupta or samanth subramaniam would be writing a book on "chennai-the city that was".But such a thing did not and will not happen.I even began thinking of the plight of bombay if it was struck by a similar wave.GOD SAVE THE WORLD!What an unfortunate thing to happen and that too the day before my birthday.I was not in a mood to celebrate my birthday.As usual my birthday went eventless.An "eventless" birthday?Well that's another blog.
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Name: Sheks
Home: Madras, TamilNadu, India
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