One Month On

We have lost it.

A pall of mist covers this valley. Nature is in mourning on this full moon night, 25th. Jan 2005. The white crests of the shushing small waves move back and forth and disappear, hardly visible. A month ago, on another shore, a sharp, cold full moon, unnaturally bright, looked down. The deep velvet sky was clear. It was a cool night.

Everyone is still overwhelmed with the enormity of that day of survival and destruction. It brings to mind unbearable grief, remembrance of what took place 26th December 2004. What unfolded that day and since is deeply etched in all of us.

We have evolved. We are not able to sense, see or detect the danger? Our instincts are blunt now.

Why did we not know ? The animals did. Story after story has come to light of dogs, cats, and other domestic animals that saved themselves. Birds and bees escaped. In the ravaged southeast the waves washed floodwaters up to 3 km (2 miles) inland at Yala National Park, Sri Lanka’s biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild animals.

Elephants, leopards, deer, jackals, crocodiles were safe. “There is not even a dead hare or rabbit” say the authorities. “I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening,” H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka’s Wildlife Department, has said.

Yes, we have lost it, we have lost our finer sense. Primitive men and women sensed danger before it came. They were in tune with earth and themselves. We have lost our acute hearing, our sharp sense of smell. Our psychic abilities have left us. Our feet are not firmly planted in the ground or perhaps we should have four feet each firmly placed on earth.

Elephants to ants knew the danger. They still possess their fine acoustic sense. They can still pick up the vibrations and infrasound, changes in the air pressure.

In Khao Lak elephants knew the tsunami was coming. The animals at the elephant parks started trumpeting when the earthquake took place near Sumatra. Dang and his wife Kulada had never heard them do this. They managed to quieten them down. But they started wailing again about an hour later and this time they could not be quietened. Some charged up the hill, others that were chained broke their hefty manacles and ran up the hill.

Those on the beach picked up children and adults with their trunks and threw them over their backs and ran away from the beach about a kilometre away and the tsunami came right up to them and stopped.

A woman who could not save her children trusted her twins to another. This woman followed the wake of an enormous snake and found land and safety for the twins and herself.

We have lost our 6th sense.

Peace

Thailand

The Land of Smiles,

A country of grace and beauty.

On a bright clear Sunday, 5 Jan of 2004, a hundred million paper cranes drifted down gently from the sky, cranes of peace and harmony.

Sixty three million people, minus perhaps 5 million disgruntled Muslims, “origamied” paper cranes of all sizes. 100 million carefully folded cranes with peace messages written in them. One special crane had Mr. Thaksin Shinawatra’s signature. Children and adults scrambled for them as the finder of this crane would enjoy a scholarship. It was also King Bhumiphol Adulyadez’s 77th birthday.

But the critics called the gesture a gimmick. The Muslims of the Southern Provinces called it an un-Muslin act. The media had their choice of words for it — they called it “50 military planes bombarded the provinces with paper cranes.”

Various ethnic groups — Malays, Chinese, Laotians, Cambodians, Indonesians, and Sri Lankans — have lived here over many years overlapping each others customs and cultures. Various religions are practised — Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduim, and Taoism with a generous splash of Animism. They have all live here in relative peace with the majority Muslim population.

Now religious harmony has been disrupted, it is not to come easy in this border region of Thailand and Malaysia.

So what is the problem? Insurgents they say — Afghani Jihads, Al Qaedas, Jamiaah Islamiahs, multiple Malaysian Islamic radical groups, and, for good measure, Tamil Tigers could be the cause, some think. A quiet and peaceful juncture for the training of terrorists perhaps, quiet provinces providing a trading post for smuggling drugs and arms in and out of the country.

Bombings of police stations, drive-by shootings of politicians, and arson has resulted in the deaths of more than 500 in recent years. Violence for violence in the burning of mosques is not the answer. Violence against the police and soldiers, security, politicians and Buddhist monks has escalated. The misguided act of security officials in piling of protesters into trucks and suffocating more than 80 has incensed the situation further.

A new awareness is needed, all is not well in this southern melting pot. The concentration of five million Muslims is not getting enough attention from the central government.

Steps more concrete than paper are needed in Southern Thailand.

Death at Ramadan

End of an enigma, end of a puzzle but still a man of many lives. Having cheated death several times; surviving a plane crash, several assassination attempts by the Israeli Intelligence Agents and a serious stroke, Yasser Arafat decided to call it quits on 11 November 04. Prior to his death it was a week of much sadness and waiting for good news in the Muslim world. Even after death the fight continues. One is not allowed to die of old age any more, it’s a mystery death. The cause of death is to be investigated.

Timing became a big issue. With only days to go before the celebration Eid, Yasser Arafat’s serious illness was in the balance for Palestinians and Muslim sympathizers. The question was whether they would celebrate Eid, the end of the fasting month or would they end up mourning the loss of Yasser Arafat. They waited for good news. Should shops stop bringing in stock for the festivities and expect the celebration flurry of buying or should they expect a shut down? Would the month long fasting end in mourning instead of celebrating? But it all ended on a sad note.

Yasser Arafat had been confined to his quarters in Palestine, under house-arrest for more than two and a half years He doggedly refused to leave the country and his first trip out was one from which he was not to return alive. Even in death he is dangerous man. It was his wish to be buried in West Jerusalem. The occupying Israelis would not permit it. Earth had to be brought from the al-Asqa Mosque to line the tomb for burial. Mourners were not allowed free movement either. Thousands in parts of Gaza and the west bank had to stay put and mourn at home.

One had to admire the speed with which his body was taken from Paris to Cairo for a public mourning and then to Palestine to be buried there according to Muslim tradition. The vast wrecked grounds of Yasser Arafat’s last abode was cleared out for the tomb and for the helicopter pads that were to bring his body and the dignitaries. Space was made for the invited guests, red carpet was laid out, and flags and bunting strung out. The burial was to be attended only by invited dignitaries. But no sooner the body arrived all plans were changed by the people. Authorities had not foreseen the loyalty and determination. Barriers could not stop them. They surged through the gates and over the walls of the large compound. Hundreds climbed up the nearby trees and higher buildings. The people of Yasser Arafat grew to an unstoppable mass.

Now the big question is who will take his place. Yasser Arafat had not trained a successor.

Election has to take place within 60 days.

But how? The nation is spread out under Israeli occupation, by Israeli security and check-point controls. There is no freedom of movement in the Gaza strip and West Bank to organize an election.

Checkmate!

Time to reassemble the pieces on the chess board. Palestinians, and Israelis, and Peace-makers are to come together. Time to put in an extra piece on the board, a jail beside the castle. Mr. Bargouti who is in an Israeli prison serving five consecutive life sentences is also a candidate.

A Celebration

Outside, the tropical evening cast a purple twilight under a blue dome of sky. The setting sun was an orb of orange. Hong Kong’s lights twinkled in profusion across the channel in the Kowloon metropolis. The buildings turned a deep blue velvet.

Inside, the restaurant was softly lit. Elegant ladies and men in quiet attire drifted in to the sound of ragas from a harmonium and tabla. The air was rich not with perfumes but with the aroma of fennel, coriander, anise and mint.

Don and I were the guests of Raju and Egon at the Viceroy. We were offered drinks in tequila shots glasses — Sounfiya and Kanjee and Pudina. And summer coolers — exotic mixes of juices of beetroot, carrot, fennel, mint, mixed with rose water, and flavoured with cumin and salt.

We adjourned from the main bar to the banquet room. Tables were laid out exquisitely, tablecloths sprinkled with fresh red rose petals.

The speaker began with Kapha, Pita, Vita — Greek to some of us. Mr. Vinod Sharma explained the Sanskrit words, the various doshas we all are. He talked of the elements of space, air, fire, water and earth influencing everyone of us.

It was an Ayurvedic Celebration. Ayurveda, the science of life, taken from the Rig Vedas, written 6,000 thousand years ago: Ayu life and Veda knowledge. After the talk we enjoyed a vegetarian meal of exotic, tasty dishes in proper holistic Ayurvedic style.

Nature has created man and animals and plants all well balanced and living in harmony. But we have created imbalance and destruction. We need to remove the Ama, the stress from our lives. We need to return to peace and tranquility; we have a big job before us. But with attention to our mental and physical health with Ayurveda, Yoga and Meditation we can achieve both.

A beautiful reminder of the spiritual and physical side of my life on the eve of my birthday.