Victims of India's earthquake have vowed to lead a life of piety after local priests declared that the earth, revered as the Mother Goddess, had roared and erupted under the weight of their sins.
Over 30,000 people are feared dead and thousands of others were left homeless when India's worst earthquake in half a century struck western Gujarat state's Kutch region last month. "Bad deeds are blacker than mascara, and sins are heavier than the earth," said Gosai Haripur, a priest from Dhori, one of hundreds of villages and towns devastated in the January 26th earthquake, which measured 7.9 on the Richter scale. "Why else would mother earth cause so much havoc," he asked.
Mavji Bijal, a farmer, said thousands of villagers across Kutch had taken note of the priestly warnings and decided to become more religious. The men, he declared, had vowed not to quarrel with one another over land disputes while women had promised to stop harassing their daughters-in-law, a common problem in India's joint families.
"The belief that the tremors were caused by the earth venting its rage cuts across religious lines," Vejiben, the Hindu headwoman of Dhrang village in Kutch, said.
All surviving Muslim and Hindu women in Dhrang and surrounding areas, she declared, have begun "appeasing" Mother Earth through prayers and offerings, begging her for mercy as severe aftershocks frequently rip though the area. Nearly 375 aftershocks, some measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale, have rocked the area since the initial tremor.
Meanwhile, a middle-aged brother and sister were pulled out alive from the rubble yesterday after 10 days trapped in their kitchen. The army had been getting ready to bring in bulldozers to raze the damaged buildings around them when a patrol spotted someone waving from a small barred window.
But aid workers were concerned about survivors venturing back into cracked and weakened buildings. "People are still living in places where I would not even send my team because they are so dangerous. Thousands of people are living in such places," said Colin Deiner, leader of the South African Urban Search and Rescue Team in Bhuj.
"When it's time to die, it's time to die. Death is decreed by God," said Mukesh Shah, who has reopened his small grocery store in a damaged multi-storey building in Bhuj, in a desperate effort to restore some normality in his existence. "We lost everything in the earthquake and I would rather be dead than beg on the street," he added.
The only people to profit from Gujarat's devastating earthquake are the scrap dealers, who are buying up tons of debris, including iron girders, broken doors and windows, reinforced steel and other construction material.
"It's not as if we are hoping to make money from a tragedy, but there should be a lot of work for us now," said Keshubhai Seth, a scrap dealer in Ahmedabad, the state's financial capital where over 660 people died after some 50 high rise buildings were damaged and thousands of cars and motorcycles crushed.
Truckloads of debris are also being dumped daily on a clearing by the Sabarmati River, which flows through Ahmedabad, where hundreds of rag pickers were sifting the piles for useful items to sell to scrap dealers.