Waters of Infinite Sorrow

Tens of thousands are left to their tragic fate in Pakistan, while a cricket-obsessed establishment sheds crocodile tears 
Frank Huzur Islamabad 

Whilst preparing to visit Lahore for the seventh time in three years, my mind was occupied with the frightening wave of terror attacks experienced during my previous tour in October and November 2009. Since then, terrorism had bedevilled life on the streets of Pakistan and I anticipated my August 2010 visit would be similar to the last.  What I had not foreseen was the huge number of fatalities caused by the rising currents of the Indus and Chenab.  

As I travelled from my home in India, to the airport, the Indus River was fast turning into the 'Yellow river of sorrow' and was wreaking far more havoc and destruction than the suicide bombings.  

The flood-waters began their rage of terminal fury in the early hours of 29 July, 2010.  News had trickled through the Indian media about the devastating deluge destroying village after village in all the four provinces of Pakistan.  But somehow, it did not have that shocking punch that I was about to experience first hand.  

When I arrived in Pakistan, I had no idea of the gargantuan scale of the water-borne human tragedy.  It wasn't until I stared into the make-shift relief camps, which had sprung up at almost every traffic corner and market square in Lahore, that I began to absorb the size of the disaster and the misery it had created.  

Whenever my host's car came to a halt at an intersection, young boys and girls knocked at the windows, holding out square paper boxes for donations for the suffering millions. In a swift departure from the suicide blasts, drivers of vehicles no longer feared the threat of terrorists inching closer in the garb of a mendicant s or hawkers.  Instead they welcomed the advancing bands of fund-raisers on the streets. 

The holy month of Ramadan  had just begun and I soon realised that amidst the fear and panic caused by the floods, there was something else.  It was created by the helter skelter of people seeking food water and shelter.  It evoked  ghostly memories of the bloody month of Ramadan sixty-three years ago, in 1947, when the largest migration of Hindus and Muslims bloodied the water of the Indus.

Civilisation has thrived on the banks of the Indus for over 5,000 years. 

The deluge of August 2010 has threatened to devour the sanctum sanctorum of the Indus valley civilisation, Mohan Jadero in Sindh.  Stories of displacement and death are unravelling daily in the cruel mathematics of a humanitarian disaster of monumental proportion.  30 million people are suffering agonising despair: loss of homes and hearths, families, friends and livelihoods; yet their lamentation has few takers.

As the catastrophe hit, President Asif Ali Zardari, was visiting Paris and London.  He defended his time away from Pakistan by claiming his visit brought more publicity and triggered a healthy largesse from the international community.  Many of his people scoffed at these claims.

There are countless tales of pillage and plight.  Around 50,000 Hindus in the Jacobad, Thund, Sultanpur and Khanpur areas of upper Sindh have been displaced.   To add more misery, there is a reported increase in the kidnapping of young Hindu girls in the age group 10-16 who are compelled to convert to Islam.  There is a similar fate affecting young Christians in Punjab.  The mysterious disappearance of young girls and boys is a real cause for concern in the middle of this humanitarian disaster.