it sounded like the world was ending

no, really. I have never heard thunder like this in my life. Except for that one time a couple months ago here - I was up and looking out my window when my roommate came in to look as well (at 3 am), because my window looks out onto the financial district, where all the air raid stuff so far has happened. We literally turned on my computer to make sure nothing had happened. In retrospect, it was silly, but this thunder was insane. So now thunder is on my list of things that shouldn't be allowed in war-torn countries (right after fireworks).

But last night was worse. By now I can identify it as thunder, so when I was woken up at about 3:30 I wasn't scared so much as annoyed. Being jolted out of sleep by a noise that sounds like a huge timpini or a huge lorry rolling across the sky (depending on how poetic you feel like being). The lighting that accompanies this thunder is, unsurprisingly, also super intense - it would probably be enough to wake me up by itself, and is definitely enough to fry circuits, which is why all computers are unplugged during storms.

So last night I thought I'd wait it out for about 20 minutes and then the worst would be over and then I could go back to sleep without being worried that the roof was going to come down on my head. But no, that was not the case. The thunder and lightning continued, and then the rain started, which alone could keep you awake.

I kid you not, it sounded like how I would imagine the end of the world will sound.

I dozed for a while, getting woken up every so often by a particularly loud clap of thunder, and then actually got to sleep at around 6:30, when it blew over. This is not what monsoons in Delhi were like, and I hope that this doesn't develop into a pattern, because I cannot sleep through that.

On a more serious note, as I was half asleep listening to the world end, it seemed somehow like apt for whats actually happening this week in Sri Lanka. Like always, its really hard to get good information, but here are a couple of sources:

Al-Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/04/200942282537212965.html

International Crisis Group: http://transcurrents.com/tc/2009/04/a_mass_slaughter_of_civilians.html#more

This has been a long time coming, but its pretty terrifying to "watch" (and I mean that in a very very loose sense given the lack of information) it happen.