TSUNAMI

THREE YEARS GONE……..

No person who spent his/her Christmas in this part of the globe three years ago would forget the day they woke up to on the 26th of December in 2004. Like many people in Chennai, I also woke up to that day with a rocking bed. Yes, an earthquake at around 6 in the morning! As it usually occurs in all earthquakes, it created a lot of movement coupled with fear and anxiety. After sometime all the commotion died out and people were back to what they were at (sleeping!!) I had to go for my class on that Sunday. (It was a physics class at 10 in the morning at a place about 5-7 km from my house.) I went there and before my teacher could start his lecture on mechanics there were voices from different places around announcing a sudden rise in the water level at Marina beach threatening to flood Chennai!!!

That was Tsunami for me before I watched the television news after reaching home quite happy at getting a day off without classes! The disaster and damage due to Tsunami has been described in great detail at various places. I don’t want to repeat. But I want to tell you something that I saw.

I happened to visit the famous Velankanni shrine early this year. The bus goes through Nagapattanam which is believed to be the most affected place in India due to the giant waves. Believe it or not, that was when I could see the real effect of the deadly catastrophe. News reporters standing at the shore never give you the right picture, but a vast stretch of barren, abandoned land with no life, in a country of billions, does explain it all. These places, where there was active life, are now nothing but a stretch of red earth with lots of stories to tell about the red blood of people who are underneath them. Another thing that I could notice then was that the tallest building in that vicinity was a three storied orphanage! And the houses that the government was supposed to give the affected ones were in the same state as ever before. I don’t know about them now though I heard they have been distributed.

At this anniversary of that unforgettable day, I wish to join the world in its prayers for the souls of the people who are no more with us ; and also for those people who are living with memories of their loved ones and in whose life, the Tsunami has left a permanent mark (of agony and pain).