Land That Gave Us Sprinting Prodigy Hima Das Is Limping

As I write this piece sitting in a comfortable caf谷 at sea level, a million people some miles away have a polite disagreement with the term sea level. They have built houses on sea level. Livelihoods on sea level. Memories on sea level. Hope on sea level. Despair too.

But where is the sea level? Unlike ours, today their sea level is under water 每 submerged and sinking all that they built 每 the houses, the livelihoods, the memories, the hope and all the despair. All of it.

A million people is a staggering number. It would call for global outrage. Merit emergency response. But, that would be in the normal course of things. A calamity in the northeast is hardly normal for the par. Perhaps, the northeast has been so disconnected from its mainstream siblings that all its screams and shrieks fall on unresponsive deaf ears.

It doesn＊t need data scientists to suggest the probability of it happening is 100 per cent. Year after year, decade after decade.

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It＊s been weeks since the 2019 edition of the calamity paralysed life here. The devastation has been allowed to build organically. Could we not have prepared better before it happened or reacted better when it began happening? Did it have to get this point of hopelessness? This scary? There are houses being swept away in minutes, family heads doing nervous headcount of their members 每 headcount because in neck deep water that＊s the only thing you can count. Towering trees appear like saplings submerged under 7-10 feet deep water.

How have we missed noticing this? All of us. Yes, all of us. The top trends in July 2019 have been cricket, tennis and spats between movie stars and media. How many more lives need to be swept away for Northeast to make it to the news trends. It＊s a horrible thing to compare tragedies 每 but why is the hashtag ※Save Northeast§ not trending like those we saw when Chennai and Kerala faced nature＊s ire?

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If there were steps involved in making someone feel step-motherly, we have done more than our share to make northeast feel that way. Waterlogging in metros attracts more eyeballs than a region with 23 lakh hectares of its land flooded. Reiterating 每 Flooded and not waterlogged.

The land, which gifted us Hima Das 每 the mighty runner sprinting the country to glory across the world 每 is limping. There was no irony bigger than this.

Ninety-one per cent of Kaziranga National Park - a UNESCO World Heritage Centre - is flooded with dead animals floating, others holding on to last clutches for survival. Animals can swim if given attention. We let them down too.

The magnitude of it all should shake us up from our slumber. And yet we are only warming up to the news coming in from one of the most neglected sections of the country.

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How will we overcome the guilt of making the BottleCapChallenge a rage when our timely rage and attention could have saved real lives in flesh and blood.

The road to recovery is long. But there is hope. If we get together, we can overcome this. Our own countrymen are looking at us 每 we must deliver!