The Lexicographer's Rules

"You can't smell death at 3,000 feet up in the air. Nor can you see death at that height. You can only spot pockets of destruction. Patches of desolation. Yes, you start realising something is amiss. Three helicopters and yet no villagers waving frantically at the flying machines. Something terribly wrong. Dead towns, you see, do not wave, even if the helicopter happens to be ferrying the Prime Minister of the country."

—The Hindu. Harish Khare narrates what is clearly not a political photo opportunity at the scene of massive destruction caused by India's earthquake. "Our driver, we discover, is one Vittalbhai Anam... Vittalbhai is loquacious. Animated. He starts talking, sixteen to a dozen, about the tragedy that had befallen his native town, Anjar. Only after a few minutes does the realisation dawn on us that Vittalbhai is totally traumatised, and talking to complete strangers is probably working as a spot of catharsis."'

"There's even more to be said about leaving your bike on the side of the road while you scramble through a field to find yourself standing on a cliff-like edge, peering into a crater left by a bomb more than a lifetime ago. Minutes of stunned silence lead you back to your bike where, with a sense of disbelief and sadness, you try to imagine what the fields around you would have looked like covered in blood and snow and mud. As you pedal on, you glide by burial ground after burial ground, each with rows of crosses laying at peace among the poppies."

—TNT Magazine. Lynette Evb bikes through the French countryside in the Somme region of France, visitin battlegrounds and war memorials.'