Despatches from Tamil Nadu, 1
1: Clothes and garbage
All the way from Chennai to Nagapattinam through Pondicherry, Cuddalore and Karaikal, I see clothes. Heaps of clothes strewn across the road like punctuation marks in a mad sentence.
From a distance, many of them look much like Mumbai's garbage dumps, splashes of colour on a dirty heap. In Mumbai, those splashes of colour are plastic bags; in Tamil Nadu, they are used clothes.
Many commentators have pointed out that sending clothes is futile and pointless, but people keep doing it anyway, and most of the relief trucks that we pass are packed with used clothes.
Every local we speak to ridicules the idea of wearing those clothes, but they keep on coming in an unstoppable tide. Crises like this represent a good chance for city people to empty their cupboard of old and unwanted clothes, but are they shedding some kind of guilt as well? I wonder.
2: The waterline
We reach a village called Sipudupettai, near Parangipettai, and halt our car about a kilometre from the sea. We get down from our Qualis and walk towards the sea, and as we get closer, we notice an interesting thing.
Every building on our way has permanent markings on the walls that indicate the level of the water when it stopped gushing forward. It's five feet high at the building near which we get down, and starts climbing with every house we pass, till it's seven feet, eight feet, nine feet, a record of where things stood.
This does not indicate the height of the waves, of course, many of which crashed much higher, but the level at which the water remained for a long time before receding.
As the years go by, no doubt, these walls will be washed clean, one by one.
Will the memories go too?
3: The big house
Periye Veedu is how Raja describes his house. Raja's house is marked with water, a waterline of about six feet outside and five inside – you climb a step to go in - but the water clearly reached higher.
A clock high on the wall is frozen at 8.40, and there are markings of water besides it. A shattered television set lies on the floor. There are many film posters on the wall, of Bhoomika and Vijay and Ramba. There is also a poster of a scene from nature with a large caption that says When fortune knocks, open the door.
When misfortune knocked, Raja was away at sea with his brother. Their wives were at home, with their kids, 18-month-old Viswa and the 8-month-old Monsa.
At sea, Raja did not notice much - tsunamis are not felt so prominently on the sea, and begin to rise noticeably when they reach the shore. But when they returned to shore, their children were dead. And the clock had stopped.
4: The collector
At Parangipattai, we notice a crowd gathered in a compound, littered with old clothes that people are walking on. We walk in. On a wall, there are posters of dead people, kept there for identification.
There is one with the faces of six dead babies, their heads bloated, their faces contorted in a bizarre manner. What mother could bear to see this?
Inside, speaking to community leaders, is Union Milk and Dairy Development Minister, S Ramachandran. He is busy speaking to people, but we corner the man who seems to be in charge of things. He is the sub-collector here, and his name is Rajendra Ratnoo.
"We are planning for the long term," Ratnoo tells us. "When the disaster occurred, we set up community kitchens and fed them, but we encouraged the affected people to go back to their homes and cook. They did just that. We don't just want to take care of their short-term needs. We need to give them their livelihoods back."
Ratnoo tells us that the government has just approved a package whereby every fisherman who lost a boat will get a new boat (each boat costs Rs 100,000). They will also be given life-support systems, and until they are self-sufficient again, they will be given support like free rations etc.
"What do you think of the role the NGOs are playing in this?" I ask.
"They are duplicating work," he says. "First of all, they are getting too many clothes. They come and throw piles of clothes on the street and they feel like they have done a great deed. And the ones who don't get clothes end up duplicating each other's efforts. They should just come here and coordinate with us."
I am impressed by the man's sincerity, but I know only too well that the governmental systems have been utterly ineffective all across the affected areas.
He ends on an interesting note. He tells us of a village called Sasniyarpettai, by the coast, where he conducted disaster management courses two months ago for floods and cyclones.
Villagers were assigned different responsibilities, and techniques like how to hang on to tree stumps were practised. When the tsunami struck, only 22 out of 3,000 villagers died, a fantastic percentage for a village located bang on the coast.
So even if forewarned is not always possible, fore-prepared can also save lives.
5: Three boats and a bridge
Karaikal is a town, which was once a French colony. The policemen still wear kepis there. There is an inlet into the town from the sea, and a bridge over this inlet. It is about eight metres over the regular level of the water.
Yet, when the tsunami came, the level of the water rose so much that as many as three boats crashed onto the bridge, from where two were later toppled. One is still stuck on one side.
6: Politics
People have died, but politics lives on. A strange game of politics is on in Tamil Nadu. J Jayalalithaa is the chief minister of the state and controls a TV channel, Jaya TV.
M Karunanidhi is her chief rival and controls Sun TV. The latter keeps showing news that portrays the government's relief efforts in bad light while Jaya TV paints quite the opposite picture.
Every disaster, after all, is an opportunity to score a few political brownie points. And the lives that have been lost? Well, shit happens.
Despatches from Tamil Nadu, 2
They are not beggars, they don't like handouts
The tsunami is long over, but disease is taking a heavy toll. Every day hundreds of people die in the hospitals and relief camps of Tamil Nadu. The most common medical problems among survivors, according to doctors we spoke to, are:
Injuries suffered while running away from the waves in panic, bumping into debris, getting caught in fishing nets and trees, and being swept by the waves into hard objects.
Cholera
Swallowing sea water
Lack of proper hygiene
Babies without their mothers, not given adequate nutrition
Groups from all over the country have come here to help counter this, but according to Madhu Kumar, there is one basic service they are not providing: counselling.
"More than 50 per cent of recovery depends on counselling," he says. "These people are psychologically shattered. More than just their belongings, they have lost their livelihood."
We run into Kumar in Padasalia in Nagore district, where he is leading a relief team from the Neyveli Lignite Corporation. "These people have no place to stay, and they are in such trauma that they just want to leave, to go far away from the sea. Not just their bodies but also their mind has been affected."
Very Important Persons
Madhu Kumar, the gentleman I meet in Padasalai, has one huge complaint, something which infuriates him so much that his eyes widen as he tells me this, and I can sense his fists clenching.
"Why do you think the government machinery is not working?" he asks. "Because it is busy with VIPs, that's why. VIPs keep coming all the time, making routine visits to show their importance, and they have an entourage of cars and traffic detail and security, and the local authorities are busy looking after that. They even waste time lining the streets with bleaching powder (a disinfectant) instead of where people died, where they are really needed. It is a waste of manpower, and it costs life. If VIPs really want to help, they should come quietly, without so much bandobast.
"After all, there are no terrorists here."
I know just what he is talking about. The doctor I had spent a fair amount of time speaking to at Akkarakodia, Dr Narasimhan, also told me that the government machinery at Nagapattinam, the affected area, had been busy for the last four days making arrangements for the visit of important dignitaries including the chief minister and prime minister.
"You should have been on the highway on the day when that hoax warning about the tsunami was circulated. One by one, official cars bearing VIPs passed by, and the people they had come to help were left alone with a few workers from NGOs. It is shameful."
Identity
When we reach Padasalai, one of the worst-affected areas in the district of Nagore, the locals rush up to us and say, "only the Muslims came." It takes us a bit of time to figure this out. These people are lower-caste people, and for that reason, none of the other residents of Nagore, mostly higher-caste Hindus, came to their aid.
Instead, Muslims groups came forward and helped them. Later, people like Madhu Kumar did come forward, but they were from outside. Their neighbours just did not care.
A short while later, we are by the sea, watching a heavy earth-moving vehicle, so much in shortage throughout the state, making a grave besides a pile of rubble, and then lifting a grotesquely deformed woman's body out of it to put her in. But it's not as easy as it sounds. Twice the metal claw scoops her into her grip, twice she slips out, and the second time, she gets stuck in a fishing net coming out of the rubble. Kumar goes forward with a sickle to cut her free. But he is asked to wait.
We wait for five minutes, wondering what the fuss is all about. Then we find out. A government official has to take a photograph of the body, for relief and identification purposes. He eventually arrives, takes her photograph, and goes off. We all look on, bewildered. The body has no face.
But we do know one thing. She is not, or rather, was not, an upper-caste Hindu.
The most affected
At Pattinacheri, another affected village, we run into Srinivasu, a relief worker whose day job is of municipal solid waste consultant in a town called Udumalaipettai. He has some thoughts on how relief should be managed.
"First of all," he says, "there should be a central unit in each affected area from which all the relief work can be coordinated. The way things are now, many people want to volunteer, and turn up to do so, but nobody is giving them guidance on what to do. A central authority is needed.
"Secondly," and here he echoes Madhu Kumar, "they need counselling. So many of them have lost everything, they don't want to live. So many women, caught in the water, lost all their clothes, and feel deeply humiliated at being seen in that state. They suffer psychological damage."
"Thirdly, the relief should go only to needy people. Many of the most affected people are not physically fit enough to go out and ask for help. Many of the people who go for relief aren't affected at all, but greedy."
I quite understand what he is saying. All day we have seen truck after truck stop at arbitrary points, at which point a crowd suddenly gathers around the truck, and those who can push the best and shout the loudest get the best of whatever is being given out. Food grains, rice, and so on.
At one point we saw a fight between two women. A truck stopped at the village road for two minutes, threw out a few packets of rice, and then left. Two women straight away started fighting, and a gentleman by the road told us that they were fighting because one of them thought she was more deserving of the rice than the others. "People are hoarding relief material," he told us. "The really needy people are not getting any of this."
Of course, the logistics of finding the 'really needy people' isn't easy, but many of the workers in the relief trucks that come this way couldn't be bothered. They throw their relief material out, feel good about themselves, and drive away to do good elsewhere.
The best intentions...
A short while after Srinivasu tells us about how aid doesn't reach the most needy people, we are walking through Pattinacheri when a young woman named Ilakaiya stops us and starts telling us her story. "She has lost her mother and her home," Srinivasu translates for me. "She is an example of what I mean, too weak to go and get supplies, and no one comes to her." He takes an old dress from his car and gives it to her. She refuses, and he has to force her to take it.
There is one thing that many people, seeing these people in their sad state, do not realise: these people are not beggars. They have lost their livelihood, which is why they have nothing on them, but they are, nevertheless, proud people. They do not like handouts.
Ilakaiya continues her sad tale, as other village women gather around her, nodding their heads in sympathy. Then, Srinivasu does something profoundly stupid. He goes to his car, takes a packet from it, and rushed back to Ilakaiya. He puts 4000 rupees in her hand.
Instantly a commotion starts. All the women, and some men who had been standing in the distance, rush up to Srinivasu and start screaming at him. He moves away, alarmed, and some of them start shouting at Ilakaiya, who starts yelling back. One old woman strikes Ilakaiya in the arm. We move away from there, with the women all screaming at Ilakaiya, their relations, perhaps irrevocably, spoiled. All because an emotional relief worker, using his heart but not his grain, got a bit too carried away.
The Black Sea
At two places during out trip, we are told that the sea, that rose suddenly as it approached the shore, was black in colour. At
Pandalasalai, we are just told that it was jet black, which added to the fearsome effect of the waves. At Velankanni, we are told that the sea was mixed with 'black clay,'and that many survivors died because their respiratory systems broke down because they had inhaled that contaminated water.
Disaster management
Velankanni, the town famous for its church, the Shrine Basilica, is a lesson in disaster management. The waves struck there after Sunday mass, with 1,000 people on the shore just behind the church to take a dip. At first when they saw the big waves, they laughed. But then the water came closer, and they realised that they were in trouble. They ran for it but the slowest runners, the women and children, could not make it. At least 800 people died.
The state administration did not kick into action, but the church did. Unlike in other villages that we had visited, the bodies did not lie unclaimed for days, but were quickly disposed off. Whichever ones were identified by relatives were taken away by them, and buried or cremated according to their preference. The rest were photographed and disposed of, with the photographs put on a bulletin board so that relatives could identify their kin.
A counselling unit with 12 counsellors was set up, and as volunteers flocked in to help, they were assigned specific tasks. All relief organisations that came here to help went to this one central location, from where they were guided.
The result is that Velankanni is virtually the first coastal village on this trip where I saw no bodies at all. In fact, if you were a tourist casually dropping in, it would take you some time to figure out that something had happened here. The sea is calm, and so is the village.
Despatches from Tamil Nadu, 3
When time stopped on the coast
In the villages we pass, clocks that have stopped working tell a story of their own. At Puddupettai, it is 8.40 am. At Chinnavaikal, it is 9.05. At Pandagasalai, it is 9.26. All along the coast, village by village, time stopped on December 26, 2004.
Taste of honey
At Killai, a village between Chidambaram and Cuddalore, women gather to collect sacks of rice from a house. Walking away is a little boy with three butterflies in his hand. "What are you doing with the butterflies," we ask him.
"Looking for honey," he says.
Hell and high water in goddess' island
At Killai we meet a gentleman called Tamilarasan. He lives in a village called Chinnavaikal, which is at the end of a narrow strip of land that curves out into the sea, and is effectively an island at high tide. He tells us the village has been wiped out. He offers to take us there in a boat.
We walk to the shore as Killai tells us about the waves. He escaped relatively unscratched, but only because of the mangrove forest that lines the shore. The waves were neutralised by the trees, in a battle that does not take place often.
We reach the shore. The sea is blue near us, but turns green at the horizon. The waves were black when they came, says Tamilarasan, a description we have heard all across the coast. We wade over to the boat.
I think of the famous scene from Swades as we sit on the boat. Dilip is sitting in front of me with his back to me, Saransh in front of him facing us, and behind him the hull of the boat and the blue sky. Would Mohan Bhargava have been here? It doesn't matter. Thousands of people are, working madly to ease the pain, without a script that will make it to Bollywood.
The sun sparkles on the water as Tamilarasan starts the motor, and we cut through the waves. All around me I see tiny glimmers of light that seem to jump out of the water. I realise they are actually flying fish. As we approach the shore ahead, lithe white birds, perhaps terns, swoop down to capture flying fish in their mouth in one deft move. There, a flying fish is dead. There, one more. And more. Soon, they are statistics.
That shore is not the one we have to go to, though. It is just a strip of land that curves away as we go around, and keeps curving, as if it is a snake being eaten up by the water. We turn and turn, until we finally reach Chinnavaikal. We step onto the beach, onto beautiful soft sand. Ahead of us is a patch of coconut trees that runs across the length of what is, like at the moment, a narrow island when the tide goes down. We can walk across to another patch of land, and from there wind our way back to the mainland.
It is astonishing, and a blessing, that tourists have not discovered Chinnavaikal. It is a beautiful virgin beach by the sea, with electricity poles as the only sign of modernity. The villagers lived in thatched huts in the patch of trees. Every single one of them has been flattened.
About 150 people lived here. Fifteen of them died; the others survived partly because of the trees, which both fought the waves and gave the villagers something to hold on to. When the waves receded, the villagers from Killai came to rescue the survivors.
After walking past the remnants of many thatched huts, we come to a concrete structure, or rather, two walls on the ground. One of them has sunk into the mud, and a boy is on his knees wiping it clean, trying to pull it out. "What are you doing," we ask him.
"This is a shrine of the goddess Mariyamman," he says. "I am keeping it clean."
Goddess Mariyamman is known both for her benevolence and her rage. Some compare her to Durga. But of all the Hindu deities, she is closest perhaps to being a female version of Shiva, who has the same extremes -- benevolence and rage, island paradise and tsunami.
I am an athiest, so I walk away. But if I was that boy, perhaps I would be cleaning the wall too, cleaning the goddess's name painted on it. In times of such trauma, we need a crutch. The people's belief in god gives them one humans are failing to provide: hope.
Despatches from Tamil Nadu, 4
'This will also slip away from public memory'
On our way back towards Cuddalore, we stop again at Pudupettai. We see a group of people from the Ananda Marg, a fundamentalist sect, distributing medicines. We go over to them and start chatting. They are doctors from West Bengal and have brought both allopathic and homeopathic medicines with them.
I ask what are the common ailments people are having at this time and how they are treating them.
"Sleeping," says one of them.
"Sorry," I ask. "Sleeping?"
"Yes," he says sadly. "They come and they tell us, 'We can't sleep, please give us something that will help us sleep.' We give them Avil 25, an anti-allergy tablet that produces sleep as a side-effect."
For days I have heard talk of vaccines, paracetamol and oral rehydration salts until they have become almost meaningless words to me. But now I am jolted into attention. These people are not able to sleep. For now, the pills can help. How long will it be before they can sleep on their own? And what will they dream of?
'This will also slip away'
"When the pressure on the system is so high that it cannot cope, it breaks down," says Dr Mahendra, who works for the Indian Red Cross. "And that is where the NGOs come in as a prop."
Dr Mahendra says this in the context of what we have told him about the chaos at Nagapattinam. Of course, a breakdown of the system does not mean that the components of it don't try to put things together. That is not exactly what is happening in many parts of the state, where government officials are busier looking after VIPs than with relief efforts. But not so here.
Dr Mahendra is the first aid worker, we have come across so far, who has good things to say about the government and it is all because of the man in charge, the sub-collector Rajendra Ratnoo.
"Ratnoo is doing a wonderful job," says Dr Mahendra. "He is focussed, clear about what he needs to do, and is coordinating the NGOs very well, providing everything we ask for."
So is Dr Mahendra optimistic about long-term rehabilitation, if the government, at least in this district, seems serious about it?
He shakes his head.
"I have been to Orissa (where there was a cyclone in 1999), I have been to Bhuj (earthquake in 2001), and from those experiences I can tell you, long-term rehabilitation is a problem. See, now the tsunami has just happened, the press is everywhere, the government everywhere, volunteers everywhere. But as time passes -- after the immediate emergency needs of the survivors are taken care of -- most of them will go away.
"This will also slip away from public memory."
The three levels of public aid
Dr Mahendra, after I finish speaking to him about the government, tells me about the private aid workers.
"If you come here without a plan and a vision for what you want to achieve, there is no point in coming at all. Volunteers who just land up wanting to help, but not coordinating their efforts, may end up doing more harm than good. They could actually make the situation worse." I think of Srinivasu and nod.
"Thankfully," he continues, "there are some NGOs that are doing wonderful work. They have come here with a purpose, and it shows in the way they go about their work."
The organisation he refers to in particular is the Democratic Youth Federation of India. DYFI is a grassroots level organisation, and it has hordes of volunteers who have scattered themselves all across the state. Dr Narasimhan, the doctor who was doing such a brave job at Nagapattinam, is one of them. DYFI suffers from the drawback of not having a high profile and, consequently, having rather low funds. But AID takes care of that.
AID India, an organisation I can't praise highly enough for their unflagging relief work in the state, have taken a pragmatic approach, tying up with anyone who shares their vision and work ethic. They have adopted two villages in this area, Pudupettai and Pudukubbam, in association with DYFI and another group called the Students Federation of India.
One of their coordinators, Muthu Kumar, showed me a document all the team leaders have been given, the text of an e-mail from their leader in Tamil Nadu, Balaji Sampath. The document lists three levels of relief work. I don't have a copy of that document, but let me briefly paraphrase what those three levels are:
Level one: providing immediate emergency necessities like food, drinking water, medicine, shelter etc.
Level two: Building them huts and houses to live in and looking after their health needs.
Level three: Giving the affected people back their livelihood, which could involve buying boats for the fishermen who have lost everything, forming cooperatives so they can compete better in the marketplace etc.
AID's work at the two villages has now reached level two, although much of the affected areas are still struggling through level one and they intend to keep at it until level three is completed. "How long are you guys planning to stay here," I ask.
"We have planned for six months," says Muthu Kumar. "But we will stay for as long as it takes."
Note: In case you plan to donate, note that level three is the critical phase of relief work, without which these people cannot be said to have been truly rehabilitated, and very few organisations have that kind of long-term vision. AID India is the organisation to support, and if you are anywhere in India and wish to volunteer, get in touch with them. Their website is here
Empathy from within
At Panjakubbam I meet a gentleman named Kumaraguru, a volunteer for SFI. He is living with the villagers, and here is what he says about it:
"The government comes here and gives money, food, but those are handouts, and a lot of people resent that. They do not speak out about what they really want, they feel embarrassed to speak about their loss. But if you come and live with them, become a part of their lives, then they begin to trust you. They tell you what they need, what they are going through, and only then can you really help them. You have to be one of them."
I can vouch for the truth of what he is saying. The government comes and goes, aid workers come and go, a large number of volunteers come for an extended weekend, give out aid, and are gone. But some stay back, like Kumaraguru, and not only 'adopt a village,' in the terminology of some NGOs, but are adopted by it. That human touch makes so much difference.
The marriage
December 26 could have been the happiest day of Rafiq's life if the tsunami hadn't struck -- he was supposed to get married on that day.
His nikaah was fixed for noon, but the waves came in while it was still morning, and the marriage was cancelled. Rafiq was in the village of Parangipettai, close to a number of affected villages.
Instantly, all the men of the community mobilised themselves under the Jamaat, their local organisation, and swung into action.
They took all the vegetable biryani that had been prepared for the wedding feast, and went and fed it to the affected people. From that day until the day we met them, a week after the tsunami, they fed breakfast and lunch to the affected people, making either lemon rice or vegetable biryani.They mobilised their funds superbly, and were well networked through mobile phones. If any village ran short of food, one phone call was all it would take to bring a volunteer rushing over with more food.
Interestingly, even after the government set up its own operation, a few days late, the local people still requested the Jamaat to keep feeding them and the Jamaat agreed. A deep bond had formed between the villagers, who were all Hindus, and these Muslim men who rushed to help their neighbours because they believed that to be the way of their religion. Anybody who does not believe that Islam can be moderate is invited to go to Tamil Nadu and check out the work they are doing.
For all the scepticism I have about organised religion, in times of a crisis like this, groups based around religion can provide sterling service. The church at Velankanni was an example of this, the Jamaat of Parangipettai is another, and the RSS did excellent work during the Bhuj earthquake and the Orissa cyclone. Faith, that can be so divisive in times of peace, can also bring communities together in times of strife.
