When Odisha’s Angels Of Goodness Descended At Balasore To Help Their Brethren Stuck In Disaster

Life will go on but those gory images of dismembered bodies, strewn body parts, and the sound in our minds of a huge mass of metal hitting another at great speed, wailing of people crushed under the metal carriages crying for help will keep playing in a loop and haunt us a lifetime. As many times its memory would visit us, that many times our hands will rise in prayer for this not to happen again. After the Super Cyclone, Odisha registered itself at the top of one more list which no one wants its name on.

When an incident of such tragic proportions happens, baser minds like ours get tempted to ask the unseen – why? What were his plans? Why did he orchestrate such a sanguineous drama to destroy hundreds of innocent lives and leave behind ten times more people scarred for life?

The exact number of dead is not known yet. 288, 295+, 175, and 1000 are the numbers flying around and each source has its own method of counting and each will stick to their number. We thought human beings were countable but now we realise that dead bodies are not.

The response to the accident was straight out of the disaster management textbook. This is what we get to see in American movies. Well-drilled professionals cutting through the chaos with the precision of a surgeon.

Before the agencies could arrive, the locals came in droves and started rescuing people using locally available crude tools and ladders. The picture of them pulling out people alive, injured, maimed and dead was so moving and heart-rending. People from the nearby towns came in hundreds to volunteer and donate blood. For them, the world was a binary. The ones who can help and the ones who need help. Every life mattered and every minute was precious. Balasore rose above faith, regionality, language and economic divide and set a benchmark of what civilians can do sans power and resources.

The scale of the tragedy though caught various state agencies unaware, the alacrity, efficiency, coordination, and cooperation among them showed no sign that they represent three different governments ruled by three different political parties who are known for their differences. No one was blaming anyone, no one was trying to steal the limelight, and no one was trying to gain political mileage in the time of this monumental crisis facing humanity. In their minds, the same binary played. The ones who can help and the ones who need help.

But the scene in the virtual world of social media which didn’t stand anywhere near lending a helping hand was in contrast to what was on the ground. The grief and outrage of the people were painted with political and communal colours. People who generally wore a garb of decency didn’t bat an eyelid to shed it and turn vituperative and personally abusive, and many pandered and fuelled conspiracy theories against a particular section of society. No one wanted to miss the opportunity at hand to grind their personal axes of hatred and divisive politics.

Behind the cloak, some were seen with a pair of wings of goodness and ready to take humanity to the next level and some were seen carrying a dagger to slit someone’s jugular.

Incidents like these throw us to our bare selves, exposing our core values and intentions – wings and scabs.