Natural? Calamity?

We like to believe that we all live in our own separate worlds. Isolated, protected and distanced from each other. Almost as if we have stepped back into a womb. We close the door, roll down the windows and switch off our phones; proudly reminding ourselves of how we as a society have successfully managed to stop acting like one. We think we are free. We think we are independent in more ways than what our forefathers wanted to be.

Are we?

Every time a calamity strikes, the lessons to be learnt are far beyond the obvious. True, the damage to lives, property and morale takes time to recover from. But beyond the debris, above the pile of unclaimed corpses and silenced by the wails of shocked mothers, lies a hidden secret visible only to the witnesses, not the victims.

Throughout history, man strived to carve out a niche for himself. First he separated himself from the apes. Then he spent the rest of eternity separating himself from other men. Gender, religion, profession, faith, philosophy and other such tools enabled him to distinguish himself from the herd. And as years turned to eras, this process of division and sub-division became even more specialised and aspiring.

But time and again, we are forced to remove our masks and stare at our sameness. We start looking, feeling and behaving less like ourselves but more like one another. We are forced to agree that freedom is an overrated value.

Calamities, more than religion could ever achieve to do, bring people to the lowest common denominator. No one swims differently in a flood. A famine makes people equally hungry. Incessant raindrops don't wet one person more than the other. Earthquakes don't shake a palace any less than a slum. A wildfire cooks any human flesh with uniform heat.

So are we really so different from each other? Are we really that independent? Are we really so protected? Even in our self-made wombs?