Within the last 36 hours, I received an email from my friend Seshadri Rengaswamy who works for Tata Consultancy Service in Chennai, India. He wrote:

Hi Dave,

Sorry that I could not reply to you yesterday. I was on leave most of last week, in fact I felt the earthquake on Sunday morning twice for 5-10 seconds between 6:30 and 6:45am. I was wondering what was happening. There were no problems near our area.

Tsunami was very severe in Chennai and Tamil Nadu (state where Chennai is located). In fact the death has crossed 5000 in India mostly in my state. There are huge fishing communities who live along the coastline and they were all hit.

Sesh and I met when we worked on a consulting project together at a financial services company in New Jersey just after 9/11. He made a donation to my 2004 Tour of Hope Fund-raising Drive in memory of my friend Peter Frank which I greatly appreciated.

I just made a small donation on behalf of OperationGadget.com and CTDATA to the American Red Cross International Relief Fund. The Red Cross has proven over the years to be effective at directing financial contributions to disasters like the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis.

I made the donation in honor of my friend Sesh, so that he and his friends in India would know that their friends in the United States want to help the disaster victims in their country and in neighboring countries.

If you are interested in making a contribution in this time of need, you can visit the Red Cross' Donate Now! page at: http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate.html.