She flinches every time the sea howls (Five years after tsunami)

NAGAPATTINAM - Lily, 14, was born in a fishing family in Vanagiri near Poompuhar, almost right on the beach. But she gets tense every time she hears the sea howl.

Her father Chinnathambi no longer wanders on the beach in Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam district — around 300 km from Chennai — after seven in the evening. His wife, who used to accompany him to the beach much before dawn, now goes there only after sunrise.

They are among many fishing families who changed their routine since the fateful Dec 26, 2004, morning when the Indian Ocean tsunami hit their village in south India.

The giant killer wave swallowed around 8,000 lives - children, women and men - along the Tamil Nadu coast with around 6,100 lives lost in Nagapattinam district alone.

Over 230,000 were killed by the tsunami in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and the Maldives.

While nine-year-old Lavanya echoes Lily’s fear, 13-year-old Surya in nearby Kichankuppam village says she does not fear the sea now though she used to, immediately after the tsunami.

Recalling the fateful day Chinnathambi says: “I lost around 40 of my relatives and friends. Fortunately no one in my immediate family. But for three days we were in suspense about the fate of Lily.”

“I used to check the bodies of children who died. We even concluded that Lily was swallowed by the sea. Fortunately I found her in a tsunami relief camp in a village nearly 15 km from our place,” he recalled.

Lily, a tenth class student, recalls: “I saw the sea rushing in carrying several bodies and other things. Many people were running and I followed them.”

Children who lost both or one of their parents are in government-run orphanages or with relatives.

“Normally the fishing community people do not leave their kin in the lurch. But it has happened here since the surviving relatives are also affected,” says Dhanalakshmi of Social Need Education and Human Awareness (SNEHA), an NGO running pre-schools.

Five years since, the tsunami children have come to terms. Nevertheless, Lily recalls: “Earlier some of my classmates who had lost both their parents would suddenly start crying in class remembering their parents.”

“At times there will be a forlorn look in the children’s eyes that would silently convey to us that they are thinking about their parents. Post-tsunami, parents are reluctant to send their children for camps. They want the kids to be in a familiar area and back home in the evening. The fear of the unknown resides at the base of their heart,” says Dhanalakshmi.

On their part the fishermen do not go out if they find the sea even slightly rough.

“Earlier rough seas were never a deterrent for fishing. Now we just decide to skip fishing,” Chinnathambi said.

“Prior to tsunami the catch used to be good and my husband used to come back early. Now the catch has come down while the number of days on the high seas has gone up,” Ajantha Prabhakaran of Kichankuppam told IANS.

“Earlier I used to stay in the sea for two days and earned around Rs.600. Now the earning is around Rs.700 for four days in the sea,” said fisherman V. Vijayan.

The tsunami-affected people have issues related to housing and insurance claims.

The Tamil Nadu government adopted a system whereby it would identify the land for house construction and assumed responsibility for laying of roads and provision of sanitation facilities while the NGOs had to build the houses.

While the houses have come up, there are no roads and no proper sanitation facilities. So many new houses remain unoccupied.

“In some complexes leach pits were built (for sanitation) making the situation worse during rains. In many places houses were constructed without levelling the land leading to flooding in rainy season,” SNEHA’s director Jesurathinam told IANS.

Some NGOs involved in the housing projects decided to cut corners in completing the projects within their budget, resulting in leaking roofs within a year of construction.

“We now live in our old place as the new house is leaking. We plan to carry out repairs next month,” said a fisherwoman in Chandrapadi, another village down the coast.

A similar situation prevails in Karaikal in Puducherry.

“The Puducherry government gave houses but without power connection. Some have occupied the houses and some have not,” said Jayanthi, head of a women’s self-help group.

Rajendra Nattar, a fishing community leader in Kichankuppam, is critical of the relief measures and demands a white paper on the funds raised and its actual utilisation.

“Totalling up the amounts announced by different agencies - governments (central and state), NGOs (Indian and foreign) and various other organisations - one gets a fancy figure of around Rs.15,000 crore ($3 billion) towards tsunami relief. Where have these funds gone?

“Lives of people have been turned upside down. What we demand are measures to restore our lives, not doles.”

(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)