Tsunami Relief 1

After a days work!
This article is written by Priya as an account of our Trip to Nagapattinum for the relief operations.

Journey to Lands unknown…..1

Friday, 14th morning came unannounced as usual ,without any warnings whatsoever that we were going to spend one of the most memorable days of our lives ……..in our sojourn journey to the lands where ,in the recent past , catastrophe of tremendous magnitude took place , one which had been quoted as the worst tragedy of the century ….

I would like to share those memories and relish them once again as I go through the notes in my memory lanes to capture it as fresh and as unadulterated, by the passage of time.

Thursday evening, we took a bus to Pondicherry and aptly reached the place by around 10 pm. ‘First things first’ as the saying goes, we contacted the Aid India office in Pondicherry and were told to report to Nagapattnam the next day. Aid India is a Non Government Organization (NGO) which is involved with the relief work in the affected areas. We had to check in a hotel for the night and after checking our for-ever reducing ‘pocket money’, we stopped over at a pretty decent hotel for the night. It was decided by mutual consensus that all six of us (we were 2 girls, rather bright and punctual girls and 4 guys….umm no appropriate adjective comes to my mind as I write, which could describe them to the T.) would have to take the earliest bus possible and miraculously decided for the unholy time of 3.45 am the next morning at the bus stop.

So we settled for the night with the knowledge that sleep is something which will elude us for the next 4 days , and promptly got up by 3.30 in the morning and were all ready to get set and go .

We reached Nagapatnam by mid morning and immediately set out for the NGO’s office. We were asked to start for the affected villages ASAP. Before we started , our bowels were screaming for food and listening to it was very necessary for any future cooperation with them , so we filled it with what ever “kinds” of morsels that we could get our hands on ……,that day being Pongal, we had to settle for Pongal itself and trust me , I relished it completely.

Our final journey began after lunch. We were about 12 in total, including the NGO and local people and we were asked to pack ourselves in a Tata Sumo .Well that we did somehow, now I wonder how, but the Sumo, in spite of its name, couldn’t quite bear the weights of all of us and happily gave in to a puncture. Anyways, after all the ministrations, we were on our way and speedily moving towards the country side…….

The country side happened to be a village by the name of “Vellapallam”. It was a sleepy small village and the devastation was mainly caused in the ‘fishing hamlet’ of the village.
When we got our first glimpse of the shore and the mighty sea , we couldn’t comprehend that in a place like this ………..tiny , quiet and unknown to the world…………catastrophe of such magnitude could have happened . The Sea looked demure and somber …….inviting us in ……it was beautiful. Hard to imagine the forces of nature at its worst ……ugly and cruel!!!

Our first major task ,we were told was to map the entire village on paper , seemed like an easy task but in reality ,quite mammoth as we just had 2 days with us !! There were 387 houses and we had to visit each and every house and see the amount of destruction caused and collect all the required data accordingly. Most of the relief work is done ,the debris clearing is over and now what is left to do is the reconstruction …………….of infrastructure…..houses ,facilities that were lost in the waves …..Hand pumps, roads building ….boats for the fishermen ……fishing nets …..Farmers and their crops lost….cattle lost …..
Due to the strong Tsunami waves, the first lane of houses facing the shore were completely wiped out. There were in total 23 people lost ……21 dead and 2 missing.

Friday evening, we wandered in and around the village, mentally checking up things for the next day’s work. People were crowding around us ……they just wanted someone to hear their woes and their tales...…..Sadness and hope intermingled in their eyes …….

Initially it was pretty difficult to communicate with them in Tamil, but later we became ‘adept’ at conversing with them …with whatever Malayalam words that I could muster at the moment and the age-old sign language of hands and expressions . It is a very humbling experience when people around you look at you with so much faith and respect …..Just because you are “From the Shahar”…. One lady even came up to me and asked me to teach the kiddies in the small school. It was a rendering moment for me. All the village kids were with us where ever we went, some holding our hands, some looking at us with so much awe and “Stars” in their eyes …………this cute little kid “Anand Kumar “ with his very minimal knowledge of the English Language , trying to talk to us ……..for everything that he wanted to show us , he used to say ….’ I’m tree …I’m boat ……….I’m 25 …..He was telling us the boat engine is for 25 thousand rupees………’

We packed up for the day around seven in the evening .We all were sitting near the sea….it was dusk time and by God!!!!!!!!!! The place looked beautiful …..We could just sit there for hours enjoying the salty sea breeze and the silence of the place …..Just the sound of waves crashing ……. The water level had also increased a lot by evening.

We had to put up in a small town for the night …the place was ‘Vedaranyam’ .
We were given a room in a house there .It was quite late by the time we reached there so, we had to manage with bread for the dinner ………one funny anecdote to relate was that we could not find any ‘Butter’ there in the small market ……..we searched and explained with signs and all……….we could not find any butter!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyways …after all the hullabaloo of the day and night, we finally settled for the night. It was too hot in the room so we all decided to sleep on the terrace under the stars and was it good???? It was Amazing….............