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SAVE THE BOYS

SAVE THE BOYS

The world is transfixed by the ongoing rescue effort for the boys trapped in a cave in Thailand and their will to survive

Hardly does a story of human endeavour feature in the chaos and conflict of information and interpretation. Neither does faith find a place if it is not trawling trolls. That is why the cave rescue of the Thai boys — who were trapped by sudden rain and flooding in a subterranean chamber on an exploratory mission and who miraculously blipped up after 12 days of being mistaken as dead — is a life-positive story that the world is glued to moment to moment. Amid trade wars and conflicts, this is the hope story that everybody wants to be part of and contribute to, simply because these crises remind us what a chance at life means beyond our destructive potential. It has had dramatic peaks and troughs, the joy of discovery plummeted by the almost impossible nature of rescue. With rapidly receding hopes — last heard oxygen levels in the cave were dipping low and a fresh spell of rains predicted more flooding, threatening to gobble up the perch where the boys are — all nations are stretching every limb for what could be the greatest human endeavour of our time. The challenges are superhuman: The dive route is a serpentine, narrow-neck channel, five hours long where large oxygen tanks cannot be carried through. Ace divers have had to hack through boulders with limited air supply, one dying in the process. We do not know whether the untrained boys will be able to dive in perilously murky water that is filling up faster than being pumped out or whether rescue workers can drill an escape chute through the slippery and stubborn rocks overhead. But it is a chance that the world is ready to take. Football stars like Ronaldo are cheering them, the FIFA president has even invited them to watch the World Cup finals and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is doing everything possible to aid their extraction, innovating on an inflatable pod. India, too, is offering technical expertise in flushing out water through Kirloskar. Over 1,000 international experts are at it while keeping up the morale of the boys, who now have food to wait it out for four months, can talk to families through an optic fibre link and will have an air tube to stay in a bubble of sorts. But the can-do spirit ticks because of another epic rescue in 2010 when 33 Chilean miners trapped in a caved-in shaft were rescued after two months of persistent efforts. The hurdles were many — the main submergence was followed by a secondary slip-in, the first two shafts for sending down a capsule for evacuation failed, the third worked and the first capsule collapsed. Yet all 33 made it to the surface for a world exclusive moment that was freeze-framed by photographers and became the subject of a Hollywood film.

Will fate deal a cruel hand? If the boys could hold out 12 days of blackout, don’t they deserve a chance to get back in the land of the living? Perhaps it is a test of human will. More so of technology that needs to come out of the cloud and tame Nature’s wilful ways. Or perhaps it’s Nature’s way of telling us that there is no bigger battle than survival worth fighting for.

Write: The Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

SAVE THE BOYS

SAVE THE BOYS

The world is transfixed by the ongoing rescue effort for the boys trapped in a cave in Thailand and their will to survive

Hardly does a story of human endeavour feature in the chaos and conflict of information and interpretation. Neither does faith find a place if it is not trawling trolls. That is why the cave rescue of the Thai boys — who were trapped by sudden rain and flooding in a subterranean chamber on an exploratory mission and who miraculously blipped up after 12 days of being mistaken as dead — is a life-positive story that the world is glued to moment to moment. Amid trade wars and conflicts, this is the hope story that everybody wants to be part of and contribute to, simply because these crises remind us what a chance at life means beyond our destructive potential. It has had dramatic peaks and troughs, the joy of discovery plummeted by the almost impossible nature of rescue. With rapidly receding hopes — last heard oxygen levels in the cave were dipping low and a fresh spell of rains predicted more flooding, threatening to gobble up the perch where the boys are — all nations are stretching every limb for what could be the greatest human endeavour of our time. The challenges are superhuman: The dive route is a serpentine, narrow-neck channel, five hours long where large oxygen tanks cannot be carried through. Ace divers have had to hack through boulders with limited air supply, one dying in the process. We do not know whether the untrained boys will be able to dive in perilously murky water that is filling up faster than being pumped out or whether rescue workers can drill an escape chute through the slippery and stubborn rocks overhead. But it is a chance that the world is ready to take. Football stars like Ronaldo are cheering them, the FIFA president has even invited them to watch the World Cup finals and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is doing everything possible to aid their extraction, innovating on an inflatable pod. India, too, is offering technical expertise in flushing out water through Kirloskar. Over 1,000 international experts are at it while keeping up the morale of the boys, who now have food to wait it out for four months, can talk to families through an optic fibre link and will have an air tube to stay in a bubble of sorts. But the can-do spirit ticks because of another epic rescue in 2010 when 33 Chilean miners trapped in a caved-in shaft were rescued after two months of persistent efforts. The hurdles were many — the main submergence was followed by a secondary slip-in, the first two shafts for sending down a capsule for evacuation failed, the third worked and the first capsule collapsed. Yet all 33 made it to the surface for a world exclusive moment that was freeze-framed by photographers and became the subject of a Hollywood film.

Will fate deal a cruel hand? If the boys could hold out 12 days of blackout, don’t they deserve a chance to get back in the land of the living? Perhaps it is a test of human will. More so of technology that needs to come out of the cloud and tame Nature’s wilful ways. Or perhaps it’s Nature’s way of telling us that there is no bigger battle than survival worth fighting for.

Write: The Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

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