Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
April 26, 2015

Nature versus Man. Nature doesn’t win. Nature kicks your butt. I am just about to sit down to write when the building starts to shake. Gently at first, like someone playing indolently with a toy. Then it turns aggressive and things begin to move. Paintings bang against the wall , bric a brac shifts around and the floor acts as if it is going to cave in. Ninety seconds of black humor and helplessness.

There you are stuck on the seventh floor abs incapable of any concerted action. My sister is in a wheel chair so no way we can negotiate the stairs. So we just sit on the bed and stare at each other. Make stupid remarks. Outside we can hear people screaming, we are calm because we are clueless. This is pure helplessness and it is scary. The inability to outrun a storm, escape a quake, beat a tsunami, slip past a landslide, leap past a flash flood. Doesn’t work. You can do nothing. You don’t even think of praying at that moment.

It’s my first. And all I could think of was .... not like this, unsung, nothing glorious, just jam, it's not fair, marked by hysterical laughter and disbelief. I could have been in Dubai, why now, I am just visiting. A sharp sense of injustice as the shaking intensifies, like you would a rag doll.

Do what you like, you cannot beat Nature, she will always win.

(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)