Clumsy Dutch people

'Many Dutch people are too clumsy for a crisis', was the headline of the Trouw newspaper recently. It turned out to be the conclusion of a survey by Ipsos I&O among almost 1,500 people.

I felt addressed. Because what turned out? That many Dutch people lack important skills for emergency situations. For example, more than 40 percent of the respondents had never provided first aid, and more than half had never repaired equipment, such as a radio.

I only recognize that first aid from nightmares: standing over the motionless body of a loved one, and beating in vain on his or her chest, while desperately wondering: should it be louder or softer, or should it not be at all? My cat watches disapprovingly from a distance.

Fortunately, repairing radios is not an issue, because I rarely listen to them. My technical problems are mainly limited to television. It must be a macabre coincidence, but shortly after reading the article in Trouw I dropped my remote control.

The device burst open and spread its innards lavishly over the floor. I had to reconnect the batteries – how do you do that, the flat side against the spring, or the other side? It degenerated into half an hour of panicked fumbling during which the television went black. “God is great!” I shouted, because that’s what they do in Iran when the TV studio collapses during a bombing.

According to that Trouw study, the Dutch are also not very self-sufficient in the event of a long-term crisis. Half of the respondents have never grown their own vegetables, 85 percent did not know how to slaughter and prepare an animal. Cleaning vegetables is sometimes enough work for me, I refuse on principle to also get involved in the renovation. As a city dweller, I associate renovation with stones, not with vegetables. My cat does not allow me to slaughter animals, and I am sure that I would fail in this as well and the animal to be slaughtered would quickly turn the tables.

What the research shows that is usually still possible indoors is cooking or mending clothes. Unfortunately, I have to disappoint the researchers even in this. I am not good enough at cooking to guarantee them a pleasant meal. I once learned to darn socks during my military service, but when I recently tried it again, forced by a shocking tax assessment, I was no longer able to do it.

What to do? Should I also buy such an emergency kit in case Putin gets kamikaze tendencies? But a crisis expert already warns in Trouw: "People buy an emergency kit as if it were a kind of insurance. (...) But you also have to know how to use those things."

Exactly. And precisely because I will never know with great certainty, I better not start. I know a better solution. I have to emigrate to India. It strikes me more and more that India is a country where everything goes wrong. Planes crash inexplicably, entire terraces are blown triumphantly off boats, trains derail like fatal loves.

In such a country I belong. There I finally become a blessing in disguise.