Blog@GraceJunction

It been some time since I blogged. Well, I didn’t have any withdrawal symptom for sure. I wanted to ensure that too because of the way I was blogging, I had a feeling, whether it was becoming a compulsion. Gladly, all is fine.

During the time of this hiatus, however, I did have my urges to blog over certain issues that came up, but then I was really held up with some or the other work.

During the week, two figures firmed up significantly enough to impact thousands of people.

One is the inflation in India. It is almost becoming a sinful indulgence to buy simple fruits and vegetables. The Alphonso Mango has become unapproachable. The vendor showed me four pieces and said with absolutely no feelings at all, “one hundred fifty”!! I mean, almost 38 for a mango! Gold is firming. Good. Realty is firming. Good. Deposits in bank are firming. Ok. What about liquid cash? We need cash for our regular routines and its power is surely draining away. We can’t sell gold everytime and eat the profits! Inflation is hitting everyone hard. I am buying Kesar and Badaam mangoes to make up for the Alphonso vacuum!

I manufacture foam products. In the last one month, most of the input prices firmed up too. From 12 to 50, from 9 to 32, from 47 to 60, from 40 to 55, from 75 to 100! It has eaten away my profits. Not that I had much there cushioning me, but it has surely made buying Alphonsos, a shaky experience.

Shaky! Yes, that reminds me of the second figure. They started with 8000. Then 12000. Then in couple of days it was 18000 and counting. Finally somewhere I read, 32000 and its final! I am talking about the earthquake figures from China but I really doubt if these figures are really final.

First of all, it is always so amazing that calamities hit mankind and take the toll in round figures! I know that these are indicators but then what about the exact figure that were released by the state I live in, when it released its toll after the 2001 earthquake. The UNDMT site says, 20005!

Whether exact or indication, there is surely some fudging done on the figures to not to scare people, or shake the business confidence, or kick start a psychological impact on prices of everything. I will explain one reason why. When George Fernandes, the ex-defense minister, a man who was very candid in his first reactions, said, “One lakh! About one lakh or more have perished!”, people every where panicked.

The quake surely was a great leveller. The filthily rich to the government clerk, all slept with the sky above and uncomfortable polyurethane seats of their cars below for over a month! No one dared to go into their houses, lest the earth shook again! Such was the scene.

George Fernandes only meant to say, it was a huge toll and he must have thought, one lakh is a big enough number. Its not that he had received that figure from official sources. No way, because, he had visited the site immediately after the event and the system on the ground was in chaos, and no one had any figures at that point. But our man, he gave one look and “Lo!” he already knew the toll! What I was saying was that, these numbers are all fudged and perhaps the administration has no idea of realities.

The government is not even sure about the scale of the earthquake. Some say 6.9, some 7.6, some 7.9. Those days, it was almost like India’s cricket match score. People used to argue and discuss about how the earthquake was of the scale that they vouched for. It was almost like, who’s got the highest supporters for his figure! Everyone had become seismologists and knew the exact repurcussions of each scale on the Richter!

Let’s now come back to Sichuan, China.

Sichuan experienced a 7.9. China too has kept the official figures low keeping the Olympics in mind. The system is shaken up for sure and the toll is much higher as evident from the descriptions. But today morning, I just want to ask you and even myself one thing, “What will we do, when we are pushed to a point in our life, when we can’t trust the ground on which we walk!”

We have taken so many things for granted. The air, the water, the ground. They are always discounted in almost all our calculations or only factored in together as a “Force Majuere” clause in all our documents, and that too only as a precaution. But other than that, in our normal routines, we surely do take these for granted until there is a cyclone or a flood or a deluge or an earthquake.

Just imagine the scene if we had to be suspicious about their conduct. If we had to suspect the air for playing foul, or the water for scheming some damage, or the earth of shaking up once again and bringing down the things that we built up! Forget about things that will crumble down, if we have to suspect the earth before we took a step, how will our life be? Thank God, that air or water or the earth do not behave like man. But then, such occurences happen as grim reminders of the truth.

There are things beyond us and we should accept it. If we are sure about making an utopia on this planet, first we will have to tame the earth and the floods and the cyclone and the volcanoes et cetera. Can we? We will never reach that stage.

What is then that we can really do. Tame the beast within us and make sure that the foundations within are not shaky to be shaken and shattered by realities and the truth. Let’s not ignore the rattlings of nature.

I am surely not through with what I want to say. I will continue in the coming days. Keep coming back. Good day.

Tags: alphonso, blogging, China, earthquake, george fernandes, gujarat, Inflation, kesar, natural calamities, rattling, richter, sichuan, UNDMT, utopia

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under Accidents, Economy, Finance & Money, Geo, Purpose of Life, Society, Troubles & Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.