machine-envy

I have a friend called Shenth Ravindra, who recently survived the Queen of the Sea rail disaster when the train, which was travelling down the west coast of Sri Lanka on Boxing Day, was hit by the Asian tsunami. He’s had a lot of media attention since he got home safely, particularly since most of the other passengers on the train perished.

The train was hit by two waves. In between the waves, Shenth took pictures. The G2 section of the Guardian published those pictures yesterday, along with a first person account I ghostwrote for the piece.

Shenth’s story is pretty incredible. I was talking to him on the phone for two hours and the account we eventually published doesn’t do justice to the scale of his good fortune in surviving the crash and the chaos that ensued. The pictures he took are eerie. The first wave only damaged the carriage Shenth was riding in, and the people in the other carriages are seen sitting down, calmly waiting for help. The second wave killed nearly everybody on the train.