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07:11 AM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
April 18, 2013
A day for shake ups and the marathon madness
It was my first earthquake experience. The bed began to wobble and then sort of floated weightlessly above the floor. The frames on the walls began to rattle and the curtains did a sort of Hitchcockian billow. Forget about all that - take the stairs to the ground floor and run into the open stuff.
You just sit there riveted by fear and curiosity, totally incapable of taking any action. There is such inevitability about it, like where am I going to run to. So, my sister and I sat on the bed and counted 40 seconds till the pictures stilled. A long 40 seconds on the fifth floor.
Like people come out after the fact, not during it. I think those who are most pissed off are those who did not notice it. They are suddenly marginalized in the convoy and they have to sheepishly admit they didn’t feel anything.
You mean nothing. No.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat, it was massive, how could you not feel it..
Okay, I missed it, what do you want me to do, shoot myself?"
Either they were asleep, driving or bathing or doing something that covered up the shaking. Lie about it, don’t say you haven’t a clue it happened.
Dark day. Had just sort of come to terms with the earth’s hiccup when we heard about the Boston marathon blasts and you wonder what sicko would do this. Why? To prove what point. My niece was right there watching the race but was fortunately not one of the injured. She is still in a kind of fugue, like disbelieving of gratuitous violence as campus kids are, the world is a beautiful place and ugly things don’t happen.
Until they do.
(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)
If my call is so important to them, why don’t they answer it for 22 minutes?
How come when I want to, but something specific online is the only item out of stock.
When I get into a queue or lane going fast, the moment I get in, it becomes the slowest and refuses to budge.
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