Waves of courage

For Thirumal, a fisherman in the Keechankuppam village of Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu, the sea is both a source of livelihood as well as the cause for death and loss. Pain is etched across his face when he recounts the horrors of the tsunami of December 26, 2004, that left a trail of death and destruction in India and six other countries in south Asia. Thirumal lost his daughter as well as his mother to the killer waves. He is not alone. More than 6000 lives were lost in Nagapattinam and life has never been the same ever since.
Rajshekhar, a 19 year old from the village of Seruthur, has chosen to shun the sea that took away his sister and his grandparents. Fishing has been the source of livelihood for his family for ages, but he has enrolled himself for the housewiring and plumbing course at the Vocational Industrial Training Institute at P.R. Puram. But his elder brother Rajesh goes back to the sea everyday to make a livelihood with a prayer on his lips and fear in his heart. “Even the slightest sound from the sea scares us. I would love to stay away from it but fishing is all I know.”
According to the data provided by the district collectorate at Nagapattinam, a total of 14,048 permanent shelters were built across the district. Under the housing schemes, the government was to provide land and the NGOs were to meet the cost of construction within the government-stipulated cost and design parameters. The houses had to be of 266 square feet in area and equipped with basic amenities including lavatories and electricity. While most NGOs have followed the norms, a few have set up houses where eight families are cramped in one house with 180 sq feet allotted to each family. C Muniathan, collector, Nagapattinam says, “98 per cent of rehabilitation work has been done. The first phase of work is over.” This claim however is not agreed with by locals and NGOs who feel there is still a lot left to be done.
After the tsunami, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a surprising move refused foreign aid for relief programmes. Families where a casualty had occurred were entitled to a sum of Rs 1 lakh from the Prime Minister’s Fund in addition to another lakh from the Chief Minister’s fund. Says R.M.P. Rajendiran, president, Tsunami Fishermen Rehabilitation Development Association, “Till date in Tamil Nadu alone 36 people have received no money. We informed the prime minister’s office about this and forwarded a letter from the PMO to the district collector of Nagapattinam on November 23, 2009. We are yet to hear from the collector.” Aid poured in from all corners but unfortunately could not be properly utilised. Says Rajendiran, “Fishermen who lost their steamboats were allotted a subsidy of 5 lakhs and a loan of 15 lakhs from the government. But being uneducated most of the fishermen did not know what to do with the cheques for the loan. There are people who still store the cheque like a treasure but the date for encashment has long passed.”
It is this lack of awareness that the people of Nagapattinam have to battle against in the aftermath of the tsunami. Schools have been set up with a vengeance and children in Nagapattinam cannot mourn the lack of education facilities, whatever else they might long for. The students of the Panchayat Union Middle School, Palathaladi, have formed a children’s club Winmeengal meaning shining stars that is involved in a number of social activities. They also have formed a disaster preparedness committee along with the village panchayat, SEG and youth group members and meet on the last Saturday of every month to educate the villagers about tackling emergencies. For these children illiteracy and ignorance are bigger monsters than tsunami. Sabina who loves watching comedy shows on television wants to be a doctor, Thennarasi who has a passion for computers would love to be a teacher, while Sivanandan wants to be an IAS officer and K.Thirunavukarasa, a computer engineer. Tsunami has taught them that nothing can be of more help than the ability to reconstruct one’s life without having to depend on others.
This desire to have control on one’s life is what has spurred the women to leave their homes and go for women empowerment trainings on bookkeeping and leadership offered by various NGOs. Says Jayanthi who is attending a training programme on bookkeeping, “Before the tsunami, concepts like banking used to be alien to us. But tsunami showed us that we should save for the future so that we do not have to depend on alms and aid in case of a crisis.”
Physically residents of Nagapattinam have moved on to a new life but it is the psychological trauma that still persists in their minds. Says Dr. Dadrudeem who runs a mobile clinic that provides medical help to villages in Nagapattinam, “Even after five years there are so many people who even refuse to look at the sea. There are fishermen who refuse to venture out in their boats even at the cost of loss of livelihood. Any ailments that they have, from a simple fever to joint pain, they immediately associate it as an after-effect of tsunami.”
Joe Velu, director, People’s Development Association (PDA), an NGO which stepped in to provide relief immediately after the tsunami and moved on to the role of a facilitator in years to come says that physical reconstruction of life is not enough, “In the months after tsunami there were about nearly 400 NGOs who came to work in Nagapattinam. Five years down the line only a handful remains. Ideally what is needed is a situation whereby the common people in the event of a tragedy can get back to normalcy even without the aid of NGOs.” Velu further mentions that unfortunately some people still use tsunami as a crutch and refuse to go on about earning their own livelihood. Aid and help from agencies have made them dependent and they refuse to come out of the stupor. Five years have passed since that day when thousands perished to the gigantic waves ravaging lives and property. One wonders what has been done regarding the installation of tsunami-detecting equipment so as to facilitate evacuation in danger zones. An early warning system for tsunami is operational in India since September 2007. Maintained and run by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad, the warning system comprises of a real-time network of seismic stations, bottom pressure recorders (BPRs), which are sensitive to even slight changes in the pressure at the sea bottom and an array of tide gauges installed all along the Indian coast. “We have the most sophisticated and world class tsunami warning system in place”, says C Vinod Chandra Menon, member of National Disaster Management Authority in New Delhi. “We are much better prepared now to face an eventuality,” he says. R K Sharma, a senior scientist with the Union ministry of earth sciences, which coordinated the setting up of the tsunami warning system, says that with the system in place, India can hope to get a lead time of at least one hour before a future tsunami strikes the Indian shore. Will a tsunami hit Nagapattinam in the near future? Is the administration well-equipped to deal with such an event? These are questions which only time can answer. But what is important is that the people of Nagapattinam have not succumbed to the catastrophe. Life has moved on—for better or for worse, it is still early to say. But while the bells ring at the famous Saint Mary’s Church in Vailankanni, it feels as if the whole populace is praying for strength to fight, for hope to build a new future, bereft of the scars of tsunami.