1,000 pairs of shoes

The images of the shoes are what made me cry. Body counts are something the mind cannot grasp. You simply cannot imagine nearly 1,000 bodies - a crowd of the living, perhaps, but not the bodies.

Children, women, men, the aged - all left their shoes as they panicked and ran. Some were trampled, some were drowned - some were saved. Who decides which live and which die? Is it fate? Predestination? Allah?

1,000 dead - and what of the living? Each had a family, each came from somewhere. The ripple of grief spreads far and wide.

Ripples like water - like floods. Elsewhere in the world the relentless forces of nature continue to kill and make homeless and devestate and horrify. Is there no end to the bad news that streams in? One becomes numb after a while...

Flooded cities, 1,000 pairs of shoes. Images, mere images cannot portray the heart-rending hurt behind them.

Take a breath, and hope that the news today brings no more disaster.