Tsunami - Have we forgotten?

Recently, I had occasion to visit a part of Southern India (near Chennai). A beautiful sleepy village near the coast of the southern tip of the Bay of Bengal called Karikattu Kuppam. This is a village where an entire village of fishermen, whose entire lives were literally wiped out by the Tsunami, have been given temporary shelters, sanitation, means for livelihood and an elementary educational system by Freemasons who 'adopted' the entire village and true to form, are trying to provide them with much needed succour without Corporate sponsorship or Government support. I was surprised when I was met by smiling faces of the fishermen and shiny eyes of their children. For people who have had their lives violently changed, they seemed to exhibit amazing fortitude and a firm determination to piece their lives back together.

I was then taken to their original village which had been completely wiped out. When I saw rows and rows of abandoned houses which had been first in line to bear the brunt of the Tsunami, the horror of the disaster hit home. They coast ,they said was corroded by the Tsunami by over 200 yards. Not a single house in the village was intact. I met an erstwhile resident of the village who took me to show the remains of his house. Such was the tremendous force of the waves that even the iron grills of his windows were broken and bent out of shape. Even three years after the fateful day, Nagamani's eyes filled up as he recalled that day. He was playing in front of his house with his two children on his shoulders, his wife, his father and mother, his sister and his brother were inside the house just about 150 yards from the current shoreline. He pointed to the remains a coconut tree in front of his house and said the 2 waves were higher than the tree. In a matter of a few minutes all his family members, including his two children perched on his shoulders, were swept away by the gargantuan waves. He, Nagamani added with regret in his voice, was the only survivor.

I left that village a somewhat changed man. But, there is hope. A few acres of land have been acquired at a safe distance from the ocean but close enough for the fishermen to continue with their mode of livelihood and hopefully a colony shall be built for them on it.

Perhaps we may never be able to give them fair warning, we certainly cannot turn back the hands of time, but there are lessons that we could learn, from the Tsunami and from the indomitable spirit of these villagers.