The Hindu Business Line : The disaster of calamity discussions

CURRENTLY, the most confusing word for our leaders is `calamity'. On one side, the PM prays, as in King Henry VI, "free my country from calamity," and says that the recent tsunami "is a national calamity", but on the other we hear the Home Minister averring that the tragedy is being `treated' as a national calamity. To add to the mystification, the Defence Minister clarifies that some technicalities have to be followed to declare the catastrophe as a national calamity.

Normally, one never credits politicians with literary acumen and human sensitivity, so it is no great calamity that they are bewildered about the calamitous phrase, as with many other things.

With fresh and spasmodic warnings of surges in seismic and oceanic activity, those on the beleaguered Asian coasts may take long to come to terms with death and living, and the calamity that rudely cut into their routine.

The Duchess of York asks in King Richard III, "Why should calamity be full of words?" Yet, I consult the Concise Oxford English Dictionary to find `calamity' snugly sitting between `calamint,' an aromatic herbaceous plant with blue or lilac flowers, and `calamus,' a preparation of the aromatic root of the sweet flag. The word that now fills our head, however, means "an event causing great and often sudden damage or distress." Encarta explains the word as "a disastrous situation or event (often used ironically)" and that may be apt for the dilemma in the North Block. From www.etymonline.com one can find more about the word: "c.1425, from M. Fr. calamite, from Latin calamitatem (nom. calamitus) `damage, disaster, adversity,' origin obscure. Latin writers associated it with calamus `straw,' but it is perhaps from a lost root preserved in incolumis `uninjured.'"

In Encarta the origin shows as: "Latin calamitas `disaster, defeat.' Originally used in English with the meaning `adversity.'" For calamitas, www.perseus.tufts.edu offers meanings such as "loss, misfortune, mishap, injury, calamity, disaster, ruin, and adversity."

Calamity is "any great misfortune or cause of misery," describes ARTFL Project's Webster Dictionary, 1913. The word is "generally applied to events or disasters which produce extensive evil, either to communities or individuals." On the origin, the dictionary cites Bacon: "The word calamity was first derived from calamus when the corn could not get out of the stalk."

If you thought that calamity, disaster, misfortune, mishap, and mischance are all just the same, the Project's site http://machaut.uchicago.edu informs that, of these words, calamity is the strongest. The reason? "It supposes a somewhat continuous state, produced not usually by the direct agency of man, but by natural causes, such as fire, flood, tempest, disease, and so on."

On the synonyms, here is some education from Crabb: "Disaster denotes literally ill-starred, and is some unforeseen and distressing event which comes suddenly upon us, as if from hostile planet. Misfortune is often due to no specific cause; it is simply the bad fortune of an individual; a link in the chain of events; an evil independent of his own conduct, and not to be charged as a fault. Mischance and mishap are misfortunes of a trivial nature, occurring usually to individuals." Though a calamity can be private, it is more often public. But a disaster is "rather particular than private," affecting things rather than persons; thus, "journey, expedition, and military movements are often attended with disasters," explains Crabb.

For Robertson Hare, the catchphrase in Yours Indubitably was, "Oh, calamity!" and Ambrose Bierce talks of two kinds of calamities — "misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others." Speakers never tire of quoting Benjamin Disraeli's wry twist: "If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune; and if anybody pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity."

Was it on tsunami that Tennyson wrote: "I had great beauty: ask thou not my name: No one can be more wise than destiny. Many drew swords and died. Where'er I came I brought calamity." No, that's a stanza from A dream of fair women. In The Devil's Dictionary, the entry for calamity sounds philosophical: "A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering."

Calamities break houses and hearts, and as Washington Irving wrote in The Broken Heart, "There are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul - which penetrate to the vital seat of happiness - and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blossom." For creditors, Samuel Johnson's advice is not to consider debt only as an inconvenience, for it may turn to be a calamity! On the positive side, Ralph Waldo Emerson urges that every calamity is a spur and valuable hint, and Seneca exhorts that calamity is virtue's opportunity. Benjamin E. Mays's quote, "It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream," is an example of compensating calamities, perhaps.

"What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?" asks George Eliot, and one wished our opinionated parties remembered this before engaging in arguments over calamity relief.

Or, will they be sobered by the admonition of Aeschylus (525 BC) that it is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer? "As if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another," fretted Joseph Addison. "Do glue themselves in sociable grief, like true, inseparable, faithful loves, sticking together in calamity," from Shakespeare's King John may happen among people rather than amidst their leaders.

An ominous line in the Old Testament reads, "The day of their calamity is at hand." And another foretells: "Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy." These are times when our wits are drown'd and lost in calamities, as the Bard would write in the tragedy, Timon of Athens. "To bear the tidings of calamity," is a snatch from King Richard II, and it seems to describe what happened a few days ago: "Like an unseasonable stormy day, which makes the silver rivers drown their shores, as if the world were all dissolved to tears, so high above his limits swells the rage."

Even as we repent, as Hamlet did, of "calamity of so long life; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time," there is a helpful question of John Lancaster Spalding, asking if we aren't more disturbed by a calamity that threatens us than by one which has befallen us. Burke was, after all, right when ruing, "The deliberations of calamity are rarely wise," for it may be our misfortune, not mischance, that political discussions of calamity, often end only as disasters.

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

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