My friend Dilip Kumar Dubey tells me that during the quake and tsunami in Japan on 11th March, structures and skyscrapers were swinging violently but “fortunately nothing collapsed around us”.

“Had something like this happened in India,” says Dilip, “I’m sure it could have been a catastrophic disaster with enormous losses of lives and properties.”

He says the Japanese are well trained for such contigencies. “Within seconds every body was on roads, government machinery swiftly came into action. Every face was looking so calm, no panic at all.”

“Mobile phone signals were cut. Public phone booths were overcrowded. Entire Japan was on streets. I’ve never seen something like this in my life. This is turning out to be quite an eventful year. First a super cool winter and now the earthquake and tsunami. A great story to tell my children and grand children.”

And here’re some pics that he sent me. Posting them here but their copyrights would belong to Dilip only. And by the way do you know that Japan’s quake was so strong it sped up the Earth’s rotation by 1.6 microseconds.

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