The parish register at the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon says William Shakespeare was baptised there on April 26, 1564. It is surmised, thereby, that he was born three or four days prior to that date, which makes today or tomorrow — April 23 or 24 — his birthday. It is, known, more precisely, that he died on April 23, 1616, making him one of those — not all that few, given that humans are self-renewing and calendar dates are not — who have a birthday and a deathday in common.
I was not thinking of the great playwright and sonneteer, much less of his birthday or deathday, when, last week, I was listening to a remarkable workshop on earthquakes. India International Centre in New Delhi had organised this most purposeful event, in the wake of the February 6, 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and Syria which left some 60,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless, with a view to alerting India and the surrounding regions to the seismic threats they face and the right responses to those — in good time.
But what on earth do quakes have to do with Shakespeare? Just this, that the Bard has interesting things to say in the most unexpected ways on just about everything. And in ways that go beyond his wit to his wisdom. And so many of his phrases have got embedded in our minds that we do not even know we are using Shakespeare when we are saying them, like “cruel to be kind”, “the be-all and end-all”, “foregone conclusion”, “wild-goose chase” and, when we are shocked by someone or something, “Et tu Brute…”
So… did Shakespeare have something to say on earthquakes? This was the thought that occurred to me while reflecting on IIC’s timely deliberations. I had a faint recollection of such a reference in one of his plays, which one I could not remember. Blaming, in Shakespeare’s words again, my “crabbed age” for not remembering the reference, I did the next most natural thing, namely, turn to Google and lo! came the reference. It occurs in Romeo and Juliet. The Nurse, trying to remember Juliet’s age, pegs it to her memory of an earthquake.
“On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;/ That shall she, marry; I remember it well./ ‘Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;/ And she was wean’d,— I never shall forget it,—”
That reference has led some scholars, perhaps inaccurately, to date the play to 1591, since there was an earthquake in England on April 6, 1580. Known as the Dover Straits earthquake, so severe was the shaking that it toppled part of the gables of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and led Thomas Deloney, a balladeer, to write a tract titled, "Awake, Awake".
Some 6,000 kilometres due east of England, the earth had shook much more menacingly and murderously only twenty five years earlier, in 1555. This was in the Kashmir Valley. This was around midnight in the month of September, the exact day of occurrence not being known. That Kashmir earthquake was of 7.6 to 8.0 moment magnitude and had a Modified Mercalli intensity of XII (Extreme). It mauled not just the Kashmir Valley but much of northwestern India, killing an estimated 600–60,000 individuals. In the Valley’s legend and lore, the experience has remained vivid, despite the many tribulations, natural and man-made, that have followed in the five centuries. There is no one now who can say in the Nurse’s words, “I remember it well,” or “I never shall forget it,” but the genetic memory of the people of the Valley remembers it and will always.
There is a more earthy reason for it to do so as well.
An earthquake occurred, while everyone there slept, in the wee hours of May 31, 1935 at Quetta, Balochistan (now part of Pakistan). The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.7 and it is estimated that anywhere between 30,000 and 60,000 people were killed. One of the most intensively photographed experiences, the Quetta earthquake is a permanent seismic marker in the subcontinent’s memory.
The earth’s crust is oblivious to political and national calendars. It has its own calendar.
On August 15, 1950, our Independence Day, occurred the first major earthquake in independent India. It occurred in the rugged mountainous areas just south of the McMahon Line between India and Tibet, and had devastating effects. I am no seismologist, nor do I have even basic understanding of tectonics, but I can understand, in broad terms, what is meant by "It was the sixth largest earthquake of the 20th century. It is also the largest known earthquake to have not been caused by an oceanic subduction. Instead, this quake was caused by two continental plates colliding."
On January 26, 2001, our Republic Day, occurred the Gujarat earthquake, more precisely known as the Bhuj earthquake, at the very time that we were witnessing pageants and parades marking that major anniversary. With a maximum felt intensity of X (Extreme) on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale, the earthquake killed about 20,000 and injured some 170,000. Science is a great journal. In a response to the Bhuj earthquake of January 26, 2001, it is believed that 70% of the Himalayas could experience an extremely powerful earthquake because since the 1950 earthquake enough slippage has taken place for a large earthquake to occur.
I am not going to detail here the tsunami that mutilated life in the coasts of 14 countries on December 26, 2004 because that is about a very different order of catastrophes but will round off my sequence of seismic traumas with some more. On October 8, 2005, an earthquake occurred around 9 in the morning, centred near the city of Muzaffarabad, affecting nearby Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and areas of Jammu and Kashmir. The numbers killed are staggering — 86,000 — with an equal number injured and countless millions displaced. It is regarded as one of the deadliest earthquakes in South Asia. The Valley shook again on May 1, 2013. On April 25, two days from today, it will be eight years since Nepal was jolted as no jolt has jolted it since the 1934 earthquake, which we know of as the Bihar earthquake. In a space of 30 seconds, Kathmandu shifted 10 feet southwards. Some 9,000 persons were crushed to death in those seconds. Within five months of that, Afghanistan was shaken by what is called the Hindukush earthquake, killing 400 people.
Earthquakes, we know, can never be prevented; they cannot be predicted (as of now). But we can prepare for them. They are contingencies that can be planned for only in the most general terms, being beyond exact or even approximate measuring. But in all rational calculation, they are contingencies that must be provided for because of (i) high probability (ii) high financial and physical cost if provided for and incalculably higher if not provided for.
The principle is the same as in any insurance arrangement: the higher the risk, the higher the premium.
We need State interventions and outlays on:
1. Foreclosing and rolling back engineering enterprises that weaken the earth’s crust, especially rocky terrain, in the high-seismic risk zones 2,3,4 and 5.
2. Super-imposing on the existing seismic zonation maps which are really X-ray plates, new, carefully-drawn mapped plans for the protection (which can include evacuations, demolitions and rebuilding) of highly vulnerable structures, and assessing the seismic status of high follow-on secondary risk structures like hydel projects and atomic reactors.
3. Setting up a seismic building insurance scheme wherein premiums for insuring against collapse can be offered and encouraged.
4. Unveil a bold and creative architectural norm that makes earthquake proofing in the vulnerable areas a desideratum.
5. Do an assessment of the costs of rescue, temporary sheltering and rehabilitation zone-wise, of dislocated populations.
6. Fast-forward collaboration with countries like Japan and Chile that are experts in the field on earthquake anticipation through sensors and viable architecture nostrums. This would involve expenses on hiring consultants.
The speed with which we rushed relief to Turkey augurs well for our planning betimes for our own seismic safety.
As does the most welcome news that a forthcoming satellite, NISAR, jointly developed by our Indian Space Research Organisation and National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the US, is going to map the earthquake-prone Himalayas “with unprecedented regularity” and in a way that will not be obstructed by cloudy conditions, thereby giving potential warnings of likely seismic threats.
The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet remembers.
Her alter egos in the devastated terrains remember.
But most of us do not.
This amnesia is suicidal.
Anyone looking at the perilously teetering constructions in our Himalayan towns, many of them multi-tiered on stilts, will see in a trice how susceptible they are to collapse in an even ‘mild’ seismic occurrence. But if anything like what hit Nepal eight years ago were to visit us, god forbid, the consequences would be too terrible to contemplate.
I would like to believe that the India International Centre’s initiative, which had participants from the Government of India’s ministry of earth sciences and many young interested seminarists, and the new possibilities opened by NISAR will be an equivalent of Deloney’s "Awake, Awake".
