My response to any calamity is one of a shrug of a head and “it happens” philosophy. It wasn’t this way before. But repeated natural and unnatural disasters left me with the idea of disasters being movie material: unreal and untrue. But somehow the scale of the Indian Ocean Quake was just too formidable and ruthless to be left with a shrug.

I had believed in the Hindu tradition of water as our saviour. Water as the all-giving, all-forgiving: the water that gives without asking, receives all the filth without question. The same water has now ruthlessly massacred thousands of people. People who committed no sin except to have a good night’s sleep. Water is not godly. She is human.

Singapore citizens with DBS accounts can donate to the Singapore Red Cross Tsunami Relief Fund through the internet banking.