Yesterday will be marked as the one of the darkest days in Kerala (The place I live in). Why you might ask. Well, yesterday, a landslide, in Wynad, killed closed to 280 people, 240 are still missing. Pretty sure they will all end up in the death count as well. Wynad used to be our go-to chill place. Anytime we felt like we needed a break and good weather we would just take our vehicles and leave. I personally think that Wynad will never be the same after this. All of us here are glued to our screens, watching the news. It looks like hell. The once beautiful landscape now littered with death, mud and destruction. People still waiting for their loved ones even though they are pretty sure they aren’t alive. The sad part is that out of the uncountable number of bodies recovered, only around 10 or less bodies were recovered intact. The rest were in pieces. PIECES. One person recounts that they found a human lung after digging a house out. What kind of impact breaks a human body in such a way that nothing but their lung can be found ?!
All this got me thinking about several things. We humans, who consider ourselves to be so big and mighty, reduced to pieces by mere rocks and flowing water. How powerful is nature ? All it takes is a couple of seconds to wipe out our human arrogance. You may think, why is this guy blaming our dead fellow brothers and sisters ? Well, I am not. I am just blaming the system. The actions of the rich and the powerful caused this. I read a report saying that continuous deforestation, quarrying and other human greed led to this event. In almost all of these areas, tress were cut down in large scale and either tree plantation, with small tiny roots which are not enough to support the land, and tourism structures were built or activities of human greed can be seen.
Let me end this rant by saying something. We are never the masters of this land. We have nothing when we die. Lets not keep going down this path of death and destruction. We are just borrowing this planet. Stop or we all will die in vain and in pieces.
Useful reads:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Ghats_Ecology_Expert_Panel
- https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/14-years-after-gadgil-report-western-ghats-eco-sensitive-zones-yet-to-be-notified-101722329401675.html
Picture of before and after:
Stay safe people out there.
Dumb ways to die. 