Nearly 9000 people have died in India, Thailand, Indonesia, Maldives and Sri Lanka due to a massive tsunami triggered by the largest earthquake the Earth has seen in the past 40 years.

I was watching NDTV News and I was totally frightened about the extent of the tragedy and they kept stressing on the numbers to make it even worse. I switched to BBC News and was a bit comforted by their stories on how the Oxfam NGO is helping out people with food packets and plastic sheets to sleep on, and about the European Union pledging monetary help for disaster relief efforts. Indian PM Manmohan Singh has also sent 3 naval ships to help in the Maldives. Thank God people still do care about people in other countries as well.

When I got to know about all this, I immediately called up my close friend Sudheer who lives in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and was relieved to know he was safe.

Sriram, are you safe?

Saddened by all these, I was thinking why, why do these things happen? Either its people killing each other like the Iraq War and wars in other parts of the world or its natural disasters like these. Has there ever been a moment in history where man was at peace? What have we done to anger Mother Nature so much?

Update

The tsunami toll is now about 24,000 according to NDTV :(