Dear students,
Please paste the following link in your URL bar and watch the video. This is of Nuclear bomb explosion in Hiroshima,Japan. The next poem we are going to read is Doctor’s Journal entry by Vikram Seth. It is the poem describing the aftermath of this tragedy from a doctor’s eye.
A doctor’s journal entry
– Vikram Seth
The morning stretched calm, beautiful, and warm.
Sprawling half clad, I gazed out at the form
Of shimmering leaves and shadows. Suddenly
A strong flash, then another, startled me.
I saw the old stone lantern brightly lit.
Magnesium flares? While I debated it,
The roof, the walls and, as it seemed, the world
Collapsed in timber and debris, dust swirled
Around me – in the garden now – and, weird,
My drawers and undershirt disappeared.
A splinter jutted from my mangled thigh.
My right side bled, my cheek was torn, and I
Dislodged, detachedly, a piece of glass,
All the time wondering what had come to pass.
Where was my wife? Alarmed, I gave a shout,
‘Where are you, Yecko-san?’ My blood gushed out.
The artery in my neck? Scared for my life,
I called out, panic-stricken, to my wife.
Pale, bloodstained, frightened, Yecko-san emerged,
Holding her elbow. ‘We’ll be fine,’ I urged –
‘Let’s get out quickly.’ Stumbling to the street
We fell, tripped by something at our feet.
I gasped out, when I saw it was a head:
‘Excuse me, please excuse me –‘ He was dead:
A gate had crushed him. There we stood, afraid.
A house standing before us tilted, swayed,
Toppled, and crashed. Fire sprang up in the dust,
Spread by the wind. It dawned on us we must
Get to the hospital: we needed aid –
And I should help my staff too. (Though this made
Sense to me then, I wonder how I could)
My legs gave way. I sat down on the ground.
Thirst seized me, but no water could be found.
My breath was short, but bit by bit my strength
Seemed to revive, and I got up at length.
I was still naked, but I felt no shame.
This thought disturbed me somewhat, till I came
Upon a soldier, standing silently,
Who gave the towel round his neck to me
My legs, stiff with dried blood, rebelled. I said
To Yecko-san she must go on ahead.
She did not wish to, but in our distress
What choice had we? A dreadful loneliness
Came over me when she had gone. My mind
Ran at high speed, my body crept behind.
I saw the shadowy forms of people, some
Were ghosts, some scarecrows, all were wordless dumb –
Arms stretched straight out, shoulder to dangling hand;
It took some time for me to understand
The friction on their burns caused so much pain
They feared to chafe flesh against flesh again.
Those who could, shuffled in a blank parade
Towards the hospital. I saw, dismayed,
A woman with a child stand in my path –
Both naked. Had they come back from the bath?
I turned my gaze, but was at a loss
That she should stand thus, till I came across
A naked man – and now the thought arose
That some strange thing had stripped us of our clothes.
The face of an old woman on the ground
Was marred with suffering, but she made no sound.
Silence was common to us all. I heard
No cries of anguish, or a single word.
freakin…….vision of hell….. 😦
😦 miserable incident………
Its too horrible …… can’t imagine also …… !!!!! 😦
awsome vdo
AWSOME?????????????….PLS ITS WORST 😦
horrifying video….. its unimaginable………. the pain and sorrow…. i got shiver down my spine…..:'( 😦
mam…….. pls share the poem too ……
sure.
terrifying video…..!!
poor people……..:(
Really awsome video thanks mam.real cruelity is this by america on japan.
mam, wats debris and mangled???
# de·bris also dé·bris (d-br, d-, dbr)
n.
1.
a. The scattered remains of something broken or destroyed; rubble or wreckage.
b. Carelessly discarded refuse; litter.
2. Geology An accumulation of relatively large rock fragments: glacial debris.
3. Biology The fragmented remains of dead or damaged cells or tissue.
#mangled past participle, past tense of man·gle (Verb)
Verb
Severely mutilate, disfigure, or damage by cutting, tearing, or crushing: “mangled beyond recognition”; “mangling Bach on the piano”.
Press or squeeze with a mangle.
mam how did the body were vapourised ……
The temperature at the time of explosion at that area was 900 times hotter than the sun. So it is very obvious that in a fraction of second, everything including the human bodies vaporised..that is without burning…directly it just evaporated !
horrible..!!!:(
ahhhh i’ve seen more horrible movies den dis………..dis dsnt stand a chance seriously……bt quiet a tragedy n a darng man…….hatsoff
ma’am i ws thnkng tht why the japanese use (-san,-kun)aftr d names??????and y did dey use their surnames before their names
Gd evening Mayank…different cultures , countries have different name origins. And here also we use surnames before first name.
gd evenin ma’am ….can u giv examples…..i havnt seen 1
Rai Timsi :)…many places, surname is written before first name. Nothing unusual about it.
such a terrifing incident
bt ma’am v all use english n accordng to it the name should b followed by d surname right???
Hii Mayank…may be this will interest you..( source wikipedia)
In Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, it is common to reverse the order of the given and family names for the convenience of Westerners, so that they know which name is the family name for official/formal purposes.
Indian surnames often denote caste, profession, village etc. and are invariably mentioned along with the personal names. However, hereditary last names are not universal. In Indian passports the surname is shown first. In telephone directories the surname is used for collation. In North Indian states the surname is placed after given names where it exists. In south India, where use of two names is by no means universal, surname is placed before personal name and in most cases it is only shown as an initial (for example ‘S.’ for Suryapeth).[citation needed]
In English, although the usual order of names is “first middle last”, for the purpose of cataloging in libraries and in citing the names of authors in scholarly papers, the order is changed to “last, first middle”, with the last and first names separated by a comma, and items are alphabetized by the last name.[3][4]
ohhh i get it nw…..thnx ma’am
horrible tragedy…..!!!
ohh!! what a vedioo!!!!!
Pure terror… Shame on humanity…. Living hell! 😦
America dropped flyers in the 2 cities to warn that they were going to use “a terrible weapon” and told Japan to surrender and end WWII. but the Japanese govt refused to listen. If the bombs had not been dropped, WWII would not have ended.
hi ma’am!!
that incident was really drastic!!!!