Thursday, October 13, 2005
people're telling me that there were aftershock tremors that hit 5.5 last night. H says geo says. i can't find it anywhere on the news. is this true?kainchi peh last week a maulvi announced on the mosque loudspeaker (quite at random) that an earthquake was expected. all the people living within earshot spent the entire night outside. i find this vaguely amusing in a patras ke mazameen kind of way.
this morning i was admiring the aman sarai foundation's beautifully packed and labelled boxes, stacked to the roof in pleasing coordination, waiting to be loaded onto a truck. short-lived pleasure: boxes of clothes, blankets and food are for the living. boxes labelled 'bachon ke kafan' and 'baron ke kafan' are not. i can't get the grey, lifeless hand out of my head- CNN was showing a man carefully removing school-building rubble with a pickaxe around a dead hand, which flopped lower as the rocks were removed. BBC's got another dead hand, this time stretched out from a hole in the ruins, fingers splayed as if reaching out for something. a phrase like 'bachon ke kafan' shouldn't even exist :(
Mina at 8:56 AM
