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Updates - 29 January 2001 Information
on 26 January 2001 earthquake in Gujarat
The quake struck as many cities were celebrating India's 51st Republic Day. The tremble caused high-rise buildings to shake from New Delhi to Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkutta. Reports of aftershocks came in from around the country.
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JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY - From outside, the Govinda Hindu Temple is a mere storefront lost in the visual chaos of a thriving commercial strip in Jersey City's Little India. But inside, barefoot women in long, black braids and colorful silk saris take turns at the microphone to chant rhythmic prayers for those killed in Friday's devastating earthquake in their home state of Gujarat. They're joined, on the other side of the room decorated with Christmas lights, crepe paper and shimmering slivers of colored glass, by men clanging hand cymbals and beating drums. In the temple's center, a woman has placed a bowl of milk and water, an offering of a bath for Shiva, the god, appropriately enough, of destruction. "God bless their souls," said Haresh Puthak, the temple priest who fights emotion upon considering the magnitude of Gujarat's suffering. His mother and sister back home survived the earthquake -- news, he said, that had all three of them weeping over the phone the other night. Perhaps no group is more established here in Jersey City than the Indian-American community, more than 25,000 strong. Most of Jersey City's Indian Americans came from the western Indian state of Gujarat, epicenter of Friday's quake. The first Indian immigrants came to Jersey City in the 1960s when President Kennedy lifted restrictions, said Chiman Patel, who works for New Jersey Transit. Today, the community boasts its own temple, social and civic clubs, and Indian restaurants, groceries, jewelry boutiques, and video stores. A few blocks away is Public School 23, renamed Mahatma Gandhi in the mid-1980s, for one of Gujarat's most famous citizens. "We are family-oriented," Patel said, explaining how the community grew. "When one comes, he calls his relatives to join him." Along the main strip of Jersey City's Little India, posters on store windows declare the earthquake's horror and plead for donations, in keeping with an appeal by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for Indians to contribute aid. "We never ask for outside help," said Pranav Shah, a shopkeeper. "By nature, we want to be self-sufficient." Help is coming both in donations and in the prayers for the dead being offered every evening at Govinda Temple. "After so many hours, we don't look for lives now," said Vijay Desai, a Jersey City pediatrician who heads the Garden State Indian Association. "India was not prepared for an earthquake." To aid in the distribution of its aid donations, the temple, for its part, dispatched a team of 20 volunteers on Monday morning to the scene of the disaster. "They got together whatever sort of help there was -- blankets, bed sheets" and clothes, said Bharat Patel, a church member. Temple members are also hoping the team will bring back first hand news about missing relatives - information that has been nearly impossible to gather amid a widespread breakdown in the local communications grid in devastated areas. A one thousand line emergency telephone exchange is being set up in Bhuj, at the epicentre, but local officials warn that restoring full communications with the world beyond could take weeks if not months. UK community prays for quake victims LONDON, England - At a Hindu temple in north-west London, the appetite for news of Friday's cataclysmic earthquake in India verges on the insatiable. To hundreds of Indians living near the Shree Swaminarayan Temple, the juddering of the earth in Gujarat state opened a chasm of uncertainty about the fate of friends and loved ones in hard-to-contact stricken areas. Some who have attended nightly prayer sessions at the temple have relatives they have not heard from. For others, simply knowing that legions of their compatriots are suffering is reason enough for prayer. But for many mounting an anxious vigil, satellite images of the frantic salvage efforts on the other side of the world have failed to answer the most pertinent question. "Most Gujaratis if not all Gujaratis will know somebody or is related to somebody that is affected by this disaster," said Girish Patel, who had come to the mission this weekend. There are nearly a million people from India currently living in Britain. Gujaratis are especially well represented at the Shree Swaminarayan Temple, said to be the largest Hindu temple outside of India. Last year, the temple celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary Jubilee, though the current edifice -- a brick-coloured building that melds traditional Hindu and English architectural styles -- replaced an earlier structure. In the quake's grisly aftermath, the temple has launched appeals -- one of many by religious and civic organisations throughout Britain -- for assistance to quake victims. |
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