South Asians more lactose friendly than Middle Easterners?
Day: May 15, 2014
Bangladesh ferry sinks: 200 feared dead
The passenger count must be the cruelest joke. Even the smallest raft in Bengal/Bangladesh is packed with dozens of people. There will be many more people who must have been on the ferry and now will remain unaccounted for.
Just like that so many innocent souls sent to their death due to (criminal) overcrowding of boats, as has happened many many times before (the disaster below is from 2009). Some people (South Asians especially) never seem to be able to learn from their mistakes (but they will remember their pet hatreds over centuries).
….
A Bangladeshi ferry with around 200 passengers on board
capsized in a river near the capital Dhaka on Thursday, with police
reporting that at least six bodies had been recovered with a rescue
vessel still on the way to the site.
The M.V. Miraj-4
ferry capsized in stormy weather in the Meghna river at Rasulpur in
Munshiganj district, 27 kilometres from Dhaka. The accident occurred at
around 3:30 pm (0930 GMT). The ferry had been going to Shariatpur from
Dhaka.
“We are heading to the spot with rescue team,” said Saiful
Hassan Badal, Deputy Commissioner of Munshiganj district told Reuters.
He said the navy and coast guard were sending rescue teams and a ship
had been sent from Dhaka.
So far six bodies had been recovered, including that of a child, according to Oliur Rahman, a police officer at the scene.
……………
The death toll from the capsizing of a ferry over the weekend in
southern Bangladesh rose Monday to 77 after rescuers recovered an
additional 19 bodies.
Rescuers plucked 15 bloated bodies Monday
from River Tetulia, where the overcrowded triple-deck ferry capsized
late Friday, police official Mohammad Bayezid said. An additional four
bodies were found overnight in the river, he said.
Bayezid said
the bloated bodies were found as far away as three miles (five
kilometers) from the site of the accident. Rescuers used speedboats to
go farther downstream because some bodies may have been washed away
during high tide.
Authorities said the search for dozens of people still listed as missing was suspended for the night Monday.
“Our
divers have gone inside the submerged part of the ferry and found no
more bodies there today,” said Shahabuddin Ahmed, a fire brigade
official supervising the rescue work. “On Sunday we found bodies mostly
inside the submerged ferry. And on Monday, all the bodies were found
floating in the river.”
The M.V. Coco was packed with hundreds of
travelers leaving Dhaka to head home for the Islamic festival of Eid
al-Adha when it tilted and went down after reportedly hitting a river
shoal.
It started to take on water as it arrived at Nazirhat town
in the coastal district of Bhola, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south
of the capital.
Authorities said there were no passenger lists,
so it was unclear how many people were aboard the vessel, but Dhaka’s
private ETV television station said it could have been carrying more
than 1,500 people. The boat was approved to carry 1,000 people.
…..
Link (1): http://www.dawn.com/news/1106503/bangladesh-ferry-capsizes-with-200-passengers-aboard
Link(2): http://www.komonews.com/news/national/78135097.html
………
regards
Another 2 states observation
First off I liked the idea of a dichotomy between the merchantile Arabian Sea ethnicities vs. The introspective Bay of Bengal ones. It’s something interesting to explore for sure.
However I can’t help notice just how unashamed 2 States was about Ananya being a Tam-Bram. What I was even more surprised is by how accepting I was of it, when I tell people that my fiancée is from chennai. The Indians almost always go “oh so she’s Tam-Bram?”
It’s an interesting thought that caste privilege is probably here to stay with us. The only way lower castes have of succeeding is to either blend into the higher ones (Modi may be OBC but he does look FC) or the caste itself to solidify into a powerhouse (like the Nadars in TN?)
Why 2 States works.
I went to see 2 States last night and my friend & I were the only ones in the cinema (surprisingly for the large desi population in Kampala Bollywood doesn’t have long runs).
My fiancée is from Chennai but is a Sindhi while I’m a BritPak. Since Pakistan is essentially the Punjab writ large in our own convulated way we have a 2 States (albeit international) saga.
I feel that Two states could work only because it pits extremes against each other; for instance if the boy had been Bengali instead of Punjabi the alliance with a TamBran family wouldn’t have been so difficult.
Essentially the Indus ethnicities (Punjabi & Sindhi) seem to function as the de facto Pakistanis of India, loud, ostentatious & undeservedly arrogant. 2 states serves as a metaphor for the divides of the subcontinent; North/South Aryan/Dravidian, ANI/ASI, Indo Pakistan, Abrahamic/Dharmic and the duality of how they are resolved. Interestingly it echoes the age old paradigm male invaders from the north marrying the southern native females..