SIGHT & SOUND
Earth-shaking reports
by Amita Malik

An earthquake is an earthquake and each of us has a personal story about how we were caught up on Friday, the blackest Friday in years. I shall forget about the silly premature questions asked from the studio end. As many reporters did a valiant job, the ghastly tragedy overtook two sometimes warring nations, now united in grief and trying to work out a pattern of good neighbourliness.

Most ironic of all, defence personnel were killed on both sides while heartless militants were still at their old game even as their colleagues were buried under the debris in Muzzafarabad. All this came across clearly on TV, making it amply clear that earthquakes and similar natural disasters can act as great levellers.

What was most moving on TV was how entire generations of children were buried alive while still in school. In the erstwhile NWFP, schoolchildren from six to seven were wiped out, just like that. Only one little bewildered mite was seen emerging from the ruins.

I must emphasise that the most thorough, and even risky, coverage was done by Pakistan TV. There was that incredible shot of four panelists in a TV studio, carrying on like true professionals while one could see them and their chairs being violently shaken by the earthquake. That is, until the lights went off when one of them, in between praying to Allah, waved his hands to indicate "enough is enough" and all four hurried out of the studio. In fact, TV did not stick to asking questions of VIPs but kept on covering the rescue operations at different trouble spots. This way anxious friends and relatives could keep track of their loved ones, living, but mostly dead.

While the experts in India were cautious about local expertise on how soon one could get results on the Richter scale (one hour it seems), our studio anchors kept on saying "Why?" and, even more incredibly, kept asking all and sundry if one could foretell earthquakes and would the next one come at a predicted date and time? I had referred to Karan Thapar’s Tonight at Ten programme on CNBC only last week. I am happy to say that Karan proved my point that he has a wonderful research team which dug out vital facts about previous earthquakes and damage caused. The information showed how building laws were cynically flouted by builders in connivance with corrupt officials. The two experts in the studio had facts and figures on their fingertips. They were not afraid to come out with scathing criticism of what goes wrong and made positive and concrete (no pun intended) suggestions about how matters could be set right, even in five to 10 years. Useful suggestions were made about what to do during an earthquake if you are on the 21^st floor of a high-rise building, although nothing can save you if a corrupt builder has flouted all safety and other laws. This was the case in the high-rise building in Islamabad, which came tumbling down like the proverbial tonne of bricks and killed hundreds of people.

Karan Thapar tried his best to throw Kapil Sibal off balance but the minister had done his homework well. A leading lawyer, he refused to be interrupted and coped well. The discussion was good and useful, too, for the viewer who was longing for guidance on something so vital.

In the crushing news about the earthquake, there was consolation about shots of the beautiful idols (pratima) of the Goddess Durga which excel each other, particularly in Kolkata, as far as artistic innovation goes. For die-hard cricket fans there was the cricket from Chandigarh with old and young colleagues battling it out.

I suppose life, if not the show, must go on. As the saying goes, in the midst of life we are in death. How true.