Katrina: what it tells

. PHOTO: AFP

The calamity, unprecedented on American soil, makes Twin Tower or Andrew disaster pale into insignificance.

Gushing water, with twenty-foot high waves, swept away homes, cars and boats, depositing crumpled cars one above another like toys and moving homes to distant locations , like a veritable watery juggernaut.

Soon there was a vast wasteland with homeless people. No food, no shelter. No potable water, no clean clothes. Thousands perished.

The worst and the saddest part of it was that help was not forthcoming soon. The nation which prides itself, though often falsely, of taking care of distant people in Vietnam or Kuwait, in Afghanistan or Iraq, stood in spineless silence before being goaded into action after a long-drawn culpable delay, when her own citizens were languishing and dying on their land!

People were crying for food, water and medical help. Bloated corpses like carcasses were decomposing, the air suffused with stink, even days after the deluge. Diseases, including hepatitis, were spreading. The whole city, once wallowing in the residue of opulence of an extremely rich nation, now wore a look more of an impoverished part of Africa than of JK Galbraith's "affluent society", what to speak of LB Johnson's "great society".

The world simply finds it difficult to believe what it sees. As if the cup of astonishment was not yet full, the world got fed on a symbolic apotheosis. True, Nero sang while Rome was burning. But, to adduce a CNN footage, Bush was playing guitar while New Orleaners were groaning under a terrible aftermath of what Shakespeare would call "dreadful heralds to astonish us." Symbolically, too, as if by providence during the same time, the embodied epitome of superpower's justice system left superpower for eternal abode!

The US is a great nation. The people on average are nice, sportive, helpful. By and large, justice prevails on that land of plenty. When stray wrongs are done, the majority swoop on that to set things right.

Mind it, dear readers, on any soil there may emerge paranoid, aberrant leaders. They may make things go berserk. More virulently so, when falsity overtakes truth, when extreme pride and boundless prejudice stifle the sense of proportion, when mortals cross the limit set by the creator. Then he takes hold. On his order, nature (events not susceptible of explanation due to our exiguous capacity are euphemistically termed preternatural or supernatural) teaches us lessons. Natural? Yes, certainly, but the onus is on us to fathom the meaning. That exactly is Katrina.