A friend once told me that there is one good story hidden inside everyone. I am not surprised with this observation. All of us lead a life which has one or the other thing which is unique to us as an individual, as a community or as a nation. Someone is a brilliant achiever, someone else is the perpetual king of pain who courts tragedy all the time. There are many who have lived forever stricken with poverty. I know people whose life took a complete U-turn after they unexpectedly lost their young and healthy near and dear ones.

Life is so unpredictable because nobody knows God’s next move. This is what makes it all the more interesting for the people living it. Some of God’s moves are for our immediate good and some drive us to despair. Add to the backdrop the different characters who play out his drama, some strong-others weak, some altruists-others masochists, some patient-others loud, some stoic-others extremely passionate, and the way they choose to react to the same situation differently, the means at their disposal to face it, their demographical location and we will find ourselves surrounded by hundreds of stories, each as unique or interesting as our own. I chose demography because a Buzkashi (a game played with a headless goat with players on horses) is not as much of a story in Afghanistan as it is in India or in the West. A girl in jeans will not invite as much curiosity in India as it will make heads turn in Afghanistan meaning what is routine and monotonous for one may be fodder for a great story for someone else.

And, since all stories are unique for someone they should be told. Doesn’t matter if the teller is a city aristocrat or a desert girl who travels miles to fetch water for her family. Because all stories have a message, a message, which if read in the right spirit, will hopefully make us a better human being.

I had that perpetual itch to write. It’s that kind of a thing which has the capability to destroy. I thought it (the itch) was under control till I dabbled with bits and pieces of insignificant nothings. Madness began when I decided to do the unthinkable. I began to write a book, in fact  ‘The Book’.

First of all, writing ‘The Book’ takes a lot out of you. It is a job not for the cowardly. And I, do not consider myself a ‘Braveheart’ by any means. It initially is not but, after a while it becomes a one way street because the only thing that you consider doing is going on till you finish ‘The Book’. That thing called passion will not let you have it any other way. Somewhere along the way you realise that you are no more writing anything even vaguely close to what you set out to initially and that you have changed the course of ‘The Book’ entirely. You feel completely lost but still continue. It’s like swimming in the middle of the sea when you just can’t afford to quit.

So, you carry on, keeping awake at odd hours. eating into whatever little time you have with family, not sure whether what you are writing is really worth all the pain but still giving it that final push that takes ‘The Book’ past that finishing line. Tired but elated, you feel the world is now at your feet. Sadly, no. Just after you finish ‘The Book’ reality dawns that what you considered the end was just the beginning.

The entire process of writing changes your personality entirely. You are considered a Nerd and your social value nosedives. What else do you expect if you resist invites to parties, miss New Year eves and knot your brows when someone visits your home uninvited on a weekend? Add to that your new found desire to get published and the Publisher’s stubbornness in reading a new writer’s book and you almost look like the spruced-up-  photoshopped-image of a madman. But, since you have taken the plunge and without knowing have slowly converted to a ‘Braveheart’, you refuse to quit. That is almost the time when you turn back to God and become his subservient servant, silently asking him for help and conveniently forgetting that you had not let him enter your heart since the time you were born.

The end was happy for me (because surprisingly Rupa decided to publish my book) and I wish it would be so for all the other aspiring writers, never mind the pun in what I have written above. There are examples of exemplary success everywhere. So, whenever you feel down and out just look up to them for inspiration because let’s not forget – they were one of us till some time ago and we shall be one of them in the not so distant future. So don’t give up and go for it. If Rabindra Nath Tagore could do it with only a pen that wrote a few lines (till it had to be dipped in that pot again) and without Microsoft Word, you can do it too. A few good omens are already on your side without your knowing it.

The last century could be termed as the most exciting in terms of the development that had happened throughout the world, the most prominent ones being the aero plane (which killed distances), the telephone (which brought people together), the television (which brought entertainment to our homes), the computer (which propelled innovation), the internet (which connected not only computers but ideas worldwide) and the mobile phone (which revolutionised not only communication but poor people’s lives).

But this piece is not on what we were able to achieve through persistence, innovation and genius but how those achievements have almost furtively changed the way we live our lives, directly or indirectly and made some things which were an important part of our childhood disappear from our lives, namely:

The tin school bag: A symbol of my first introduction to school which I carried with so much pride. It made me love the sunshine which bounced off its shiny surface and squinted my eyes.

The black and white TV and Doordarshan: An important part of my early days, both have become extinct for me as a species. Once upon a time they were my only means of entertainment when I came back home after playing. The solid state picture tube which took an eternity to pop the picture up (the process was called warming up) and the staple diet of one film and one song program per week are both a part of my familylore.

The Kulfiwallah:  The loud resonant voice which announced the arrival of the kulfiwallah and made me run out of the house bare-feet with a twenty five paisa coin (extinct too) for a small kulfi died more than ten years ago. Now he can be sporadically found, in a renewed slightly corporatized avatar in the mall (a promotion or a demotion?).

The landline phone/The STD Booth: Both are dying very fast.  I use the landline phone only for answering unsolicited calls aimed at selling me a product I do not want to buy. I fear the worst and feel it will lose even the ornamental value that it carries in our house once the baton of running the house passes to the next generation.

The other endangered species on the verge of extinction are:

- The writing pad
- The wrist watch /the alarm clock
- The CRT monitor 
- The pen
- The playground

The sad part is that all of them made had a role to play in what I am today and I have stopped missing them already, not even caring to remember them on their anniversaries – the day when they entered my life.

* There would be many more things which could figure in this list but I put the only ones that I can recall easily. See, I suffer a memory loss even when I try to remember the other things that were at one time so very important for me.

A recession is a general slowdown in economic activity over a sustained period of time – that’s what Wiki says. A prolonged recession does not augur well for us. Understood, that it breaks people down who lose jobs or whose expenditure is always greater than their income or who incur huge business losses which are difficult to recoup. But why do the ones whose life is not so drastically impacted suffer too. Let us analyse why:

Recessions take away our freedom to do

Recessions force us to change the way we live our lives, taking away from us the freedom of making a choice. Even when we don’t need it we still need that comforting thought that we have that freedom to do whatever we want. And when that freedom to do is taken away we rile.

Recessions impact us psychologically

We need change constantly.  A lot of that change is affected by our buying power. A recession strips us of that power and makes us defer our decisions to buy indefinitely – so we delay a decision to buy a house, we stop buying clothes, a car or a mobile. They also don’t let us go out on a vacation and stifle us into sitting at homes. They make us forego that change that we need constantly in our lives to perk us up. Add to this the uncertainty of not knowing the end date of the troubling phase and we begin to feel extremely insecure.

The result

This constant feeling of insecurity and helplessness which when faced everyday starts to break us down. The symptoms could be minor irritations, leading to increased phases of unhappiness and then depressions.

What we should do to tide over?

Apart from cutting down on the unnecessary expenses we should remember the simple principle of hanging on as this is just a passing phase in our life which is cyclical and will pass just like everything else does. In fact, we should take it as a lesson to be better and stronger for the next recessionary phase as and when it comes. And also we should not forget to add recession to our daily prayer asking God not to let the next one be as long because one thing is for sure – just like all natural calamities, recessions too will inevitably strike again and again and the people who will suffer the most would be the ones who are least prepared to handle them.

Its been a long hiatus. Hope it has done me some good and I am able to write better (read readable) blogs. While I had been away, I was pushed hard by my friends (and push came to shove and shove to pester – never heard of it?). One of them even had the gumption of comparing a writer to a cricketer and insinuating that as cricketers practice daily so should I begin to write daily too. My good friend does not realize that we writers may suffer from a tennis elbow too and need to recuperate.

After being badgered so much I decided to start blogging, if only for the sake of stopping all those unsympathetic comments from those cruel friends who, I think, do not give a damn if I happen to sleep lesser. I can imagine a smirk on their faces when they write to me or call me advising me to return to writing. And so was born my resolution for the year 2009.

Resolutions are funny things. They remain dormant throughout the year only to surface when it is the new year eve and then go back to dormancy again in a week’s time. And they are not small. In fact, they are huge and come with the intent of turning the normal lives of normal human beings extraordinarily and not letting them return to that stupid past. So, on the new year eve and under the influence of different factors such as alcohol, peers (everyone is adopting one) or simply the urge to overpower your suppressed weakness you fall prey and choose one for yourself too.

They are outrageous and are almost like asking for a miracle to happen. The obese wants to be thin (surpassing the stage that is fat), the two pack a day smoker wants to quit (not realizing there is a state of moderate smoking in between), the strictly non veggies resolve not to eat meat till the next New Year eve -  all of them waiting for that smallest of chance to fail. What follows is a deep sense of guilt and depression until you begin to think you are imbecile and a complete waste.

My advise to all my readers is to start small, just as I have done (I chose writing every day as my resolution – pun intended) and survive to see tomorrow and still be sane. And you know when to expect my next blog, don’t you?

I regularly go out on a pilgrimage to Vaishno Devi – once a year at least and at the most. It absolves me of my sins and my conscience of the ever nagging thought that I don’t remember Him too often. I always try to choose the time of the year very carefully so as to avoid any mad rush on the way.

The journey

I took a train from New Delhi; which leaves late in the evening and reaches Jammu early in the morning. From there it is a 1.5 hour ride on the vehicle of your choice – I chose a bus as it is more airy and less claustrophobic. It was supposedly a deluxe bus – a euphemism which is often used to extract more money from the traveler (I came back at 60% of the cost). The driver was a regular so he knows very well when trains full of tourists arrive and the absence of locals on the bus helped him make a neat profit on this.  The bus was dirty to say the least with the covers on the head rests turned inside out to make them cleaner.  The bus stopped at a particular restaurant – though for such a short journey we did not need a break; again I believed they must be making a neat sum because of bringing the hungry tourist to the restaurants. The bus had almost 40 seats and the people on the bus more than 50 – handsome sum again because what they would be paying to the bus owner would only be for the 40 seats. The bus also dropped newspapers and vegetables at stoppage points on the way. What I could figure out in the short journey was that the bus driver and his partner were running several small parallel businesses to supplement what they earned from the bus owner. Shady but necessary!

The Arrival  

Katra is a very small sleeping town from where you start the 25 odd km journey (back and forth) to ‘The Bhawan – where you get to see the three different pindis which you have come to see from so far off.’ Strangely, Katra does not eat onion – a departure from the traditional North Indian style of cooking, leave apart stuff like eggs and the more sinister meat. I guess it is more to do with the image than any actual religious belief. And since the whole town thrives on the religious tourist for his living nobody is willing to take the risk. I have been there in the late seventies as a child (and honestly I remember very little of it) but from what I hear from my friends and relatives the place has taken off in a big way and is now recognized as one of the holier religious places with a daily turnover of between a few thousands to more than 50 thousand people depending on the time of the year you are visiting. Earlier there was no lighting, the roads were not paved, fewer kiosks on the road but all this has changed for good. The Vaishno Devi Shrine Board has done its bit. You will get affordable food all along the way with fixed prices, clean drinking water, neat road, lighting and since my last two trips cell phones have started working too though they were banned earlier too. I could also spot a few people with Cameras too. And all the big brands are investing heavily there too realizing the huge potential the place has to offer. The only thing that I found missing on my earlier trips was good food (with an overdose of a particular type of food – fried paraanthaas and rice). This has been addressed to some extent this time with food courts opening up at both the half point (crudely translated) and at ‘The Bhawan.’

The Bhawan

For the believer, the Bhawan is the realization of his religious dreams. If you are a first time visitor you need to be very careful because there is a good chance that you will miss seeing the right pindi in the ‘not more than a few seconds that you get there’ – I missed the Pindi completely the first time I went there way back in 1996.  This visit was more relaxed with fewer people there on account of festivals being around the corner. The Pandit was generous with his advice too pointing you to the right Pindi and I got more than my share of time. The place is guarded like a fortress and you feel really secure that there are so many people from the CRPF guarding ‘The Bhawan.’

The Conclusions

A very well run machinery with every cog of the wheel doing the bit its supposed to do. There are a few small lapses here and there but they are more an exception to the process than the rule. People are honest in their dealings but with very little leeway from the system that is the way it should be. The only place where you need to be careful how you spend your money is the bazaar in Katra where you need to be careful with the price of what you are buying. The locals have a hard life in whatever they may choose to do – be it an individual Pithoo, or a part of the team of four carrying the Paalkee, or the guy who runs the auto (you need to be wary of him as he can overcharge too seeing the extent of tiredness  of your body). Anybody can undertake this trip whether young or old, healthy or disabled with a lot of solutions available to facilitate your trip. In short, a pilgrimage worth taking at least once in your life!

Being adventurous is at most times a virtue but sometimes it can lead you to trouble. The adventurous are sucked in by the charm of the unknowing, succumbing to that wanton lust of exploring beneath the surface and beyond the obvious. The problem is that you fail to realize when you have scratched more than needed and discover places that need not be discovered in the first place.

I will term my wife a free flowing adventurous spirit too; someone who does not realize when she crosses the line and starts playing with danger. She did something which I will not forget and forgive in a hurry. She went to a shopping mall, first committing the cardinal sin of shopping (her heart out) and then (because she had shopped so much it entitled her to participate in a competition for a free gift voucher for travel to someplace in India) deciding to fill in her information and leaving it in the drop box. (Un)luckily she won.

It all started with a phone call to my wife. The lady who called belonged to the travel company which owned and marketed room nights on the concept of partial ownership for 25 years. She said that we had won a 3 day 2 night trip to a destination of our choice (out of the 10 new resorts that they had opened recently). My excited wife called me in the middle of an important meeting to tell me we had won. I did not believe her and said there must be a catch – how could God be so kind to me. I had never got something easy and how could it be different this time. I postponed the celebration to later in the evening when I got back home.

It turned out that the lady wanted both of us to come to collect the voucher. I said if we had won something where was the need to go. She could simply mail it to our address. I kept on looking for that catch and insisted on speaking to the travel lady before going for collecting the voucher. The lady called and my wife handed the phone to me. While explaining our prize she asked suspicious questions like ‘Did I drive a car’ and ‘which car did I own’. When I asked what was the reason behind her questions she told me that she was verifying whether I actually was the husband (she had this information from her previous conversation with my wife). Still, to be honest, I was not able to find a catch (except that we needed to spend an hour with them) and believing it to be the mandatory cost of getting our voucher, I decided to go.

The voice on the phone was nothing in comparison to the embodiment (of the voice off course). She asked us water thrice, took excessive interest in our daughter, wanting us to be comfortable (in the process making me hugely uncomfortable) and even had the gumption of talking personal (things like why I was so quiet on the phone etc.). I cowed and was beginning to disintegrate when she spared my life  and handed me over to the sales rep. 

The sales rep was a piece of art too. He was no less aggressive, again overtly friendly and was the questioning type too – asking me questions like which card did I use and wanting to take my exam on how much and what did I know about his company before he divulged any information. I was flabbergasted by then, not knowing where to run. I wanted to drop the idea of the gift voucher altogether, but Mama had taught me to be polite and never lose my cool. So I stayed put. My wife spared me some trouble by telling him to direct all questions to her. So he ran us through the entire (boring presentation) on how many resorts they owned and where. He had a skewed up geography – putting the resorts in Spain and England under the ones in the territory of UK. I was calculating the cost of ownership and believed it would be around 10k dollars. He said that we were under no obligation to buy but we had to give a decision then and there – a simple Yes or No. Funny character! A 10k decision immediately. This is why both of us were called together he said. The strategy was simple – Woo the wife so that she could goad the husband into paying.

30 minutes into the presentation I knew more about him then he about us. He was 1.5 months into the job, did not get any time off and was planning to leave the job. 50 minutes into the presentation I saw another couple enter. They looked professional, cut the sales rep short, refused the presentation and left by the 55th minute with the gift voucher in the husband’s hand. And since Mama had taught me to be polite we still had 5 minutes to go.

After the 1 hour, I refused him politely (with tearful eyes) while looking down at my shoes, not having the courage to look him in the eye. Finally, the predicament was over. We got our gift voucher and left wondering whether the gift was actually free. And when we sat down at home to choose the destination, it said somewhere in fine print that children below 12 were not allowed .

Over the period of its existence India has not started any war. We have been invaded, time and again, by the Mongols, the Mughals, the British and in recent past by Pakistan and China. This statement of fact tells a lot about us as a nation. We have been taught to be subservient, respectful, non-violent and not aggressive. This has now become a part of our personality, well entrenched in our mindset and something very difficult to shrug off. What this has led to is that we have learnt to adjust to almost everything even when we don’t have to. We subconsciously do it almost everyday, everywhere.

On the roads
It comes as no surprise to us if someone stops his car in the middle of the road and has a conversation with his best friend in the other car, when that someone takes a turn without giving an indication, successfully keeping his intent a secret till the very last moment, when he squats on the side of the road and does something foul smelling with his thing, when he comes together with other people in groups and starts walking on the road like the King of Universe while you try to figure out if it is in angst or in happiness – he materializes all his plans on the road with the biggest celebration of his life – getting married too, happening on the road. We adjust to all of this and more by simply waiting for our chance to get past.

At work
Since our superiors have traditionally been older than us and supposedly more knowledgeable and experienced we learn to obey and find it difficult to express disapproval – because disapproval is dissent and dissent is revolt which our system does not endorse. So we are caught in the confusion of condoning the wrong or fighting for the right. We do nothing and decide to let things be.

At home
Life is a song till you decide to get married – we either leave home or bring someone home. Both the situations are full of challenges. Tradition once again steps in. We tend to walk the tight rope, not wishing to tread on any feet whosoever’s they may be. We acquiesce and again let things be.

In politics  
The top politician for long is the quintessential grey haired, balding, stooping old men confused on whether to take control of their lives first or the country and we stand and watch and adjust to that as well. We pay taxes and watch them not making roads, not being able to provide the basics of electricity and water, not doing enough to uplift the poor, not providing healthcare and education, just to name a few. We adjust again thinking this is what best life has to offer.

From all others
We adjust and forgive all the non achievers. What this has led to is lowering of our expectations from everyone – so we accept our sportsmen failing dismally (or performing below par) and accepting it as the will of God, we accept terrorism as part of our lives, we accept our friendly neighbor dumping his garbage in front of our house or help him make changes to his house by letting him pile up all his construction material in our parking slot and we also accept the loud blaring of the religious sermons emanating from the place of worship with a smile – after all our prayer will not be accepted by Him unless it tests someone else’s peace. We accept everything. Our senses have been numbed into accepting mediocrity that life has to offer and live on. Sab chaltaa hai bhaai!!!

The Wikipedia describes the Jeans as trousers made from denim mainly for work and which became popular in the 1950s among teenagers though a certain Mr. Levi Strauss used to sell blue Jeans to the mining communities of California even in the 1850s.

My earliest memories of Jeans date back to the mid 1980s when my sister gifted me one. I kept wearing it for years (with constant support from Mama who found innovative ways of increasing its waist size not willing to accept that any cloth could have an end of life without it being actually torn into pieces) and it became one of my favourite wears as well as an object of constant admiration. Opening my small closet and looking at this prized possession became a part of my daily routine.

That women of the country will adopt it completely was still some time away. I remember watching an Interview on TV towards the late eighties when the girl students of JNU defended Jeans as something that should be worn by women. They strongly refuted the claims of the Interviewer that Jeans was a provocative piece of dress and its use by women in India should be discouraged with the simple point that the Jeans hid all the sensual parts of the female anatomy as compared to the widely endorsed Sari. Very true, a Sari is a very sensual wear and it does a lot more to the male imagination than what a Jeans ever could.

By mid 90s the Jeans had firmly entrenched itself in the men’s wardrobe and was slowly becoming a part of regular female attire as well. Initially, it was worn with a long shirt to allow the people of India to adjust to  this new statement of Independence of Indian women and the pattern continued for a few years into the early 2000s when the shorter shirt and Tshirt were finally accepted both by the classes and the masses. That some navels show and some behinds protrude does not really bother the new India. This really signifies the coming of age of the country as a whole.

The ride for the Jeans has not been easy. There were protests by antagonists and some isolated incidents of violence to discourage its use – which included a few women being shot at below the knees but the Jeans and Indian women were to go hand in hand. In the new scheme of things the old, the young and the kids have all started wearing it. The only ones left behind are the very old lot (in their sixties and above) who seem to shy away from its usage but the day is not far behind when, I believe, it will be accepted wholeheartedly by people of all ages.

Over the entire last week I and my brethren experienced rain and reacted differently to it depending upon where we were. While in office we cursed because the journey back home will be long and tedious and if at home, the feeling was romantic bordering on aphrodisiacal. One of my lady friends who is currently studying in Houston will not forget those rains, the winds and the collateral devastation in a hurry. She was only slightly away from the epicenter from what we have come to know as Hurricane IKE. So let us read it as a first person account.

The Introduction

In the first week of September we began to read about Hurricane IKE, but the interest was more academic than anything else – Gustav or IKE, how does it matter; after all they are storms which are only seen or heard and never experienced. But I forgot that if destiny could make me travel thousands of miles to study in Houston it will also not let Mighty IKE touch my life only academically. By the second week of September we knew it was coming. We began to guess how strong and where the landfall will be – the interest had turned from purely academic to slightly real life. That is when I googled for the words “Hurricane” first and “Hurricane IKE” later. The next thing I did was adding weather.com to my favorites in the browser. By September 11 forecasting models began to say that the landfall will be at Galveston, not very far from where I lived.

The Preparation

We were galvanized into action. We visited the stores for what was left in the grocery stores, looking for food which was non perishable, storing water and making a lot of Paraanthaas which could last us for a few days. We went to the gas station and ordered a full tank. Since then it was listening to weather channels constantly, where would IKE hit…, after all Hurricanes could weaken suddenly too, I hoped irrationally. Questions like will we get flooding, wind damage or both or none became the only topics of discussion. IKE was our life for the next few days. I began to understand why news anchors say that survivors suffer most from hurricane fatigue. By Friday we were very sure but still praying and hoping against hope that Mighty IKE might change its course, if only just. We were least bothered where the landfall finally will be and the only thing we prayed for was for Mighty IKE to skip Houston.

I began to curse the wooden house (which I loved so much for its warmth earlier) for its lack of strength. I was afraid that it would fly away when the 110 miles per hour winds hit us. I taped the shards of glasses on my window together stupidly hoping they would withstand the strong gust. I put all potential flying objects (guitar, laptop, vacuum cleaner) on the floor knowing very well it was the biggest hurricane after 1983. I was afraid that my closet which was in one corner of the house might blow away so I removed all my stuff to the rest room. By then we had said good byes to all our friends back home, charged the cell phones again till they were charged all four points, and switched them off (to use them sparingly as they and a small radio with lithium cells could be our only connections to the outside world). We were ready, holed up in the living room.

The Anxiety

In noon we got dumbstruck by the announcement that it was the last chance for people who did not heed the evacuation orders earlier to flee or wait to die. By that time the 500 mile big Hurricane had started hitting  Galveston. The water had risen to sea wall and there was no beach left. Then came the bigger bad news that in our zip code mandatory evacuation orders had come for N. Macgregor residents. Highways were full and leaving then would mean getting stuck on a highway for 10-40 hours. It was too late. If we were to die it’d rather be at home with friends clutching each others’ hands.  I was getting emotional. We were lucky (ironical, isn’t it) that we did not get the mandatory evacuation order till evening and by that time it was too-too late. Nerves began to fray and we shouted at each other at the slightest of provocation. The fact that we were 45 miles away from sea shore, sitting in a wooden house surrounded by trees and that Mighty IKE was reaching for us and not south of us as we had expected, began to tell on us. At 1 am on Saturday the electricity went, Mighty Ike still hadn’t hit the coast, though our house had begun to shake already. It hit the coast at 2 am and was traveling with a speed of 14miles/hour towards us. There were 10 of us but nobody was sleeping. We cracked the oft repeated jokes, laughed nervously at each one and refused to look each other in the eye, lest we would all see the fear in our eyes. It was as if we were deriving our strength from refusing to acknowledge that we were weak. The Mighty IKE finally passed us at 4 am. I touched myself and pinched my friend to see whether the survival was for real.

The Aftermath

In the morning when the house stopped shaking we came out to see how lucky we were. Four trees around our house fell  but miraculously spared us. Only a little damage to the roof remained as proof that Mighty IKE had hit us. The wind gust that hit our house was just 70 miles/hour when IKE passed us as compared to  Galveston which experienced winds in excess of 110miles/hour.

Its been 7 days and Galveston is still a ghost town. The Mayor said many people left their homes not to come back as there is nothing to come back for. The grocery stores are still not open and some which are don’t have enough stuff. The traffic lights are off so you need to stop at each intersection…and there are big lines at each one of them, no gas and big lines at the pumps which are open. Houston is big and no public transport makes it worse. The power will take another week or so to come. There are curfews in the night to avoid arson – the list of woes is endless.

The Musings

This is how the story of Category 2 hurricane which hit the the most developed nation and the power hub of that nation ‘Houston’ ends. It makes me wonder how long people affected by the Tsunamis or floods (most recently in Bihar and Orrisa in India) take to gather the pieces of their lives together and return to a normal life.  Or are they ever able to at all???