The River Of Sorrow...

Nature can be beautiful, refreshing and kind. But on another day it can be brutal and devastating. Bihar is already a state that is writhing in poverty and disparity. As if the people of the state were not already suffering a lot, here comes another reason, almost every year...Nature.!.! Either its the extreme cold and heat wave that kill hundreds or Floods that just sweep a few more away. Floods is just one of the many of such rituals in Bihar. Floods strike, people are relocated, floods subside and people go back. Usually the floods every year are minor, and somewhat necessary to the agricultural sustenance. But this time it has been a massive catastrophe...! Not seen ever in this region since 1950.

The problem is that the river Kosi didn't like to stay where it is. All rivers change their course over a period of time. But most do so gradually and take take decades to alter their path. River Kosi, however does so abruptly. It overflowed apparently due to a breach in a dam in Nepal. The massive amounts of water from the melting Himalayans glaciers inundated large parts of Bihar. When the flood water settles down,the river will be in a totally different place...!! That's why its also called the "Dancing River". Thus the dance of death continues. And millions of lives have been devastated, homes destroyed and future of millions more is uncertain. No matter what the government does, the scale of destruction is so much that providing aid is quite difficult. And of course there is also all the red tape invlolved which takes time to untangle and some official in between will try to stash some aid for himself.

Which brings me to the point about man trying to control nature. No mater how much man tries to keep it in check ( dams, canals ), nature always finds a way to strike back. The only difference is that man takes at least a few years or decades to ravage nature. But when nature strikes all it sometimes needs is a few minutes or days. Who knows, maybe the floods were caused due accelerated melting of glaciers, as a result of Global Warming. India is always prone to the vagaries of nature. People generally are able to handle disasters of manageable proportions, quite well. But there are times when the balance of nature is ruined beyond hope. And when nature tries to get back into the equilibrium messed up by man, it does so rather violently. The result is what we sometimes see as really bizarre or as horrific fury of nature.

The only problem is that most of who perish in such calamities are those who already are one of the most downtrodden. Ah well... nature doesn't know to select it victims. Alas.