Lessons from the Japanese tsunami
At exactly 2:46 pm on March 11, one year to the Japanese tsunami, sirens wailed through the skies to mark the first anniversary of the events of the horrible day. Trains stopped, work stopped briefly as mourners bowed their heads in prayer for the victims. Measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, it was the strongest ever recorded earthquake in Japanese history, claiming approximately 19,000 lives, with thousands still missing. A year later, as reconstruction work continues and debris is removed from the cities — giving the Japanese landscape some semblance of normalcy — things are still not near or close to ...
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Japan: Where are our manners?
While Pakistan’s business and political leaders have been lining up at the Japanese embassy in Islamabad to sign the condolence book in the wake of the massive earthquake and tsunami that has affected that country, nobody seems to be willing to back up their words with a cheque or two. This seems rather impolite, especially when one considers the fact that Japan is one of the largest donors to Pakistan. Direct financial assistance from Japan to Pakistan is relatively minimal, but considering how much Japan donates to Pakistan through multilateral agencies, total financial flows from Tokyo to Islamabad are estimated ...
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Does our media have attention deficit disorder?
News stories are like bomb blasts in Pakistan. Stories, like bombs, go off at frequent intervals here. People die every day and those who survive get agitated and display their anger at the lack of security. But then another bomb explodes and everyone forgets about the previous one. It seems the media follows a similar path. The biggest story of the year The media told us that the floods were the most devastating catastrophe to have ever been witnessed by Pakistan. Newspaper headlines shouted that more people had been affected than in the Haiti earthquake, tsunami and the 2005 Pakistan earthquake ...
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A reason to hope
I was stuck. I had managed to come within two feet of the huts I had been aiming for but now I was on a grassy edge of the mountain with four large goats and the huts were on a level above with no way to get there. Then the lady appeared. Like an angel with wrinkled skin and orange hair, she was startled to see me with my army green shoulder bag and sneakers, a dupatta perched on my head. “Where’d you drop from?” she asked in surprise and then called over her family. It took two women and ...
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Notes from the flood zone
This flood is worse than the 2005 earthquake because it is going to cause prolonged misery. First of all, all this water is a cesspool in the making. People have no clean drinking water. Do you know what they are doing? Drinking flood water. This is causing gastrointestinal problems. Stagnant water and mosquitoes will ultimately result in malaria. I am not medically qualified, so I can’t paint an accurate picture of the problems, but this is the gist of it all. Apart from that, it’s monsoon season, and we all know all kinds of bugs and insects come out during the ...
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Where do we stand?
The Express Tribune website recently ran an online poll asking visitors if they had made an effort to help flood victims in the current crisis. The results were a clear indication of the state of apathy our society seems to be sinking into: 92 per cent responded with a “No”, while only eight per cent said “Yes”. For most of us, our lives revolve around the little worlds we have created for ourselves. So it’s always my family, my friends, my career, my home and my job that occupy our time and attention. Seldom are we able to step out ...
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