Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

It's an image that still haunts me. The silent, devastatingly advancing waters, obliterating everything on their way. The houses that fall like a deck of cards and are pushed away as if they were toy cars in a giant's box. And then, there's the look on the victims' faces, returning two simple questions to the television cameras: Why? How come?

There are no words with which I can describe my feelings when footage of the recent earthquake in Japan and subsequent tsunami first filtered through. Above all, what really affected me was the silence. It was an eerie scene, to see this solid, black mass of water pressing on, undeterred. And yet hardly a noise came from the television set.

By contrast, the soundtrack to the recent uprising in Libya has been a cacophony of roaring planes, heavy gunfire and Qaddafi's manic voice ranting and raving against the coalition's bombing campaign. Once more civilians find themselves trapped between a dictator's desperate attempts to cling to power and the possibility of getting killed by a foreign allied group's projectiles. As in the natural disaster in Japan, the images streaming through from Benghazi and thereabouts, are daunting.

What unites both humanitarian crises, dreadful as they are, is the public response they've triggered off. It's almost as if we, passive witnesses, are intent on proving wrong the theory that suggests that our reaction to events of this scale depends on the death toll. It is a common belief, and one I would not dare to refute completely, but with which I slightly disagree, that the higher the number of victims, the lesser attention we pay. In my own humble opinion the way we show our sensitivity towards disasters, whether natural or man-made, depends on other factors, too.

The first one is preconceptions, or to put it more bluntly, prejudice and bias. Last summer's floods in Pakistan killed more than 1,500 people and affected approximately fourteen million. An event of this magnitude should have, ideally, spurred the international community into action. However, judging by what I read in newspapers and magazines and what I saw on television, support for the victims was inconsistent and came mainly from Muslim groups both in Pakistan and abroad. At the heart of this lukewarm response was the image of Pakistan as a terrorists' haven, so often portrayed by the media. That leads me to the second factor.

Exposure is fundamental in how we feel about natural disasters. Especially exposure in the media. Japan is a First World country and plenty of Westerners go there to work and live. It's also part of those nations of which we think in benevolent terms, i.e., we don't think about them at all. We're aware of Japan's role in international finance and technology, we're acquainted with its developed economy and we never cease to remark on Japanese tourists and their diminutive cameras, happily snapping away wherever they go. It makes sense, then, that when an earthquake strikes this Asian country, we're united in grief with its people. In the case of Libya, our sympathy is born out of association. One by one the regimes in North Africa have been tumbling down like dominoes. It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that we sided with the rebels who rose against Qaddafi straight away. We probably thought it would be a matter of days before the despot went the same way as Mubarak and Ben Ali. But, that's not how it's panned out. The Libyan leader continues to hold to power and as I write this post his forces have regained part of rebel territory, coalition bombing campaign notwithstanding.

The other element as to why sometimes we're more or less capable of empathising with victims of humanitarian crises is context. And numbers don't really come into play. When an earthquake struck the western coast of Haiti in 2010 causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the response from the international community was immediate. Thus, the theory that stipulates that humans have a limit of how much horror they can put up with is flimsy, in my view. Note, please, that I'm not dismissing the argument per se, but rather trying to widen up its scope, making it more flexible and malleable. I believe that there's a threshold in humans when it comes to empathising with victims of catastrophe. For instance, I contributed a small donation to the Haiti relief effort last year by means of an event I attended and which was organised by a friend of mine. Her aim was to raise awareness of the influence of Haitian folklore on Cuban culture, and more specifically, on Afro-Cuban culture. Yet, I have never given money to the dozen or so charities whose leaflets fall out of my weekend's papers and magazines. It's not that I don't think that the African child dying of malnutrition or the Asian baby born with a cleft palate is less deserving than the victims of the Haiti earthquake. It's to do with repetition. The African child's image in The Guardian's Weekend supplement, is the same one that appears in The New Statesman and The Economist. In my case, at least, it's not being unempathic, but being discerning.

Which is why the image of the tidal wave that devastated Japan's north-east coast still haunts me. It's the silence that accompanies the footage, a muteness that could well arrive in the middle of a still night. With fatal consequences.

© 2011

Next Post: ‘Road Songs’, to be published on Wednesday 6th April at 11:59pm (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

There is a gigantic Zoo in London that is made up of roughly 270-odd cages. This humongous enclosure covers a large part of Greater London and the neighbouring areas of Hertfordshire, Essex and Buckinghamshire. Every day different specimens prance, roar, squint, fight and sprint in its subterranean coops. Some of the most interesting social interactions I have seen in the animal kingdom have taken place in this den.

Of course, I am referring to the London Underground and its escalators system.

As an ex-commuter I sometimes miss the good old Tube's moving staircase. Call me a masochist, but I have a soft spot for that up and down motor-driven movement. And what really sets my nostalgic pulse racing is the remembrance of the various breeds I came across during those years when I regularly joined the zoological brigade each morning and afternoon during the rush-hour.

Exhibit A is the Hippopotamus Verticalus, a territorial bull of an animal. The hippopotamus is largely harmless when stationary, i.e., standing on the right side of the escalator as all signs indicate. But mention rush-hour and you will see him/her stampeding down the transport device. Pity the person who gets caught in that charge. They will be dragged down mercilessly and without so much as an apology to compensate for the onslaught.

Another specimen notable for its ubiquity is the Vulpes Stǣger ēlectricus, commonly known as 'escalator fox'. This creature, and this applies to both male and female, has some remarkable characteristics such as an endless flirtatious nature. Commonly found on the right side of the moving staircases watching the people going in the opposite direction and fixing their vulpine eyes on them, the escalator fox is the chief contributor to the formation and disintegration of many a platonic relationship. Life span of the aforementioned affair? The couple of minutes it takes you to go up or down the escalator.

The last species I will be describing in today's post is the one to which I belong, the Suricata Observatorus, commonly known as 'Underground Meerkat'. Unlike our cousins in the Kalahari Desert in Bostwana, and in South Africa we don't hang around together, so, please, don't call us 'mob' or 'clan'. What we do do is observe. We love watching people, their quirks and mannerisms and then we write about them on our blogs. The Underground Meerkat has a creative and inquisitive nature, which, alas, sometimes gets them into trouble. Have you ever tried to explain to a bloke that you were not ogling his 'bird', but merely participating in a very human exercise called 'sentry role-play'? Minus the barking sound. We all need to stop somewhere.

These are but three of the many creatures commonly found on the escalators of the London Underground; after all, it is a big Zoo. Lack of space and time means that I have had to exclude some other interesting specimens. For instance, the Loxodonta Passager is similar to the Hippoppotamus but with a better memory. If they feel wronged by you, he/she will remember whereabouts on the escalator you were exactly when the alleged incident took place. And next time you're on the electric device with them, they will remind you. With devastating consequences. The Acinonyx jubatus subterrāneus is the only traveller capable of running up or down the motor-driven device without causing any havoc whatsoever. All you feel is a gust of wind between your legs and the signs of footprints where his/her shoes trod momentarily before. Since his/her speed can reach up to 75 mph, nobody has ever been able to describe one in detail.

This post only concerns itself with the specimens using the London Underground's escalator system. In future columns I will write about the other urban species who populate the platforms and the trains.

As much as I hate to admit it I love the new McDonald's ad. It's one of those guilty pleasures that has been preying on my mind for the last few weeks and to which I have to own up now. The reason for my feeling so ashamed is that I stopped going to the fast-food restaurant many years ago. I remember distinctly when, it was a Sunday and Chelsea had just trashed Spurs 4-0 for the second time that week. My wife, my son and my newborn baby daughter were in the car having some burgers and chips - well not my daughter, obviously. Then my son said: 'I love coming to McDonald's, they always give you a toy'. My wife and I looked at each other only once and we both knew what the other one was thinking. We never crossed the golden arches again.

But now it's different. The new McDonald's ad, with its Rolf Harriesque approach (it's based on a piece by him and Rolf himself gave his approval for his poem to be used), is a work of genius. Bouncy, buoyant and breezy, it is the epitome of British urban cool. The photography is amazing, especially when one takes into account the drabness of McDonald's colours. Another reason for me to be embarrassed is that up to now I have been very snotty when it comes to advertising on telly and if a commercial doesn't look or feel like one of Guinness's promotion clips, I'm not interested. And this comes from a teetotal. But I would willingly forsake my self-imposed exile from the land of alcohol to just sip on a cold Guinness if that implied getting closer to the horses riding on the crest of waves (and the Moby Dick motif), the elderly swimmer and the snail race (shot in Cuba, apparently, correct me if I'm wrong, please).

However, that McDonald's ad is a serious contender for promotion clip of the year. Even if I will still stick to Ed's Easy Diners and Gourmet Burger for a long time to come.



Copyright 2009

Next Post: 'What Makes a Good Writer?', to be published on Tuesday 15th December at 11:59pm (GMT)