My personal experience of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
Velankanni is a small town on the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu, about 15 km south of the port of Nagapattinam.
It is famous for The Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health, a shrine dedicated to Virgin Mary. Legend has it that Apparitions of the Virgin Mary appeared here twice to local people near a local pond. During one of these appearances the Mother cured a cripple. In a third appearance, The Apparition saved Portuguese sailors trapped in a storm. The Portuguese sailors then built a chapel there. That chapel has now grown into a church with three chapels.
It is believed that the water of a pond in the church has healing properties. In 1962 Pope John XXIII elevated the Church to a Basilica due to these miraculous healing properties. The Shrine is also known today as “Lourdes of the East”.
Our family was on a Christmas holiday. We had reached Chennai on the 23rd and had driven down to Velankanni the next day in a Tata Sumo vehicle. Our plan was to spend a couple of days at a resort in Velankanni, and then drive back to Chennai on Boxing Day. We knew the GM at the resort, and he had arranged the Sumo vehicle for our to and fro journey.
The East Coast Road from Chennai runs south to Mahabalipuram and Puducherry, and then on to Cuddalore, Nagapattinam and Velankanni. On way to Velankanni we had stopped at Mahabalipuram for a few hours, and then driven on to Velankanni. The plan was to stop at Puducherry for some time on the way back.
The day after we reached Velankanni was Christmas. We had taken an excursion to Tanjore, about 90 km from Velankanni, to see the Brihadeeswara Temple. The route to Tanjore took us back along the coast to Nagapattinam, from where we turned inland on the highway to Tanjore. After seeing the temple we returned to Velankanni around 8 PM. We went to the beautiful Virgin Mary Shrine and saw the Christmas festivities.
The Shrine is right on the beach. A full bazaar had sprung up to cater to the thousands of pilgrims who had come for Christmas from all over the country. I saw vehicles with registration numbers from as far away as Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat parked near the beach.
Our driver told us that since it was late, we would not be able to take healing water from the pond in the church that night. However he said he would bring us back to the “Amma’s Church” the next morning, before we left for Chennai.
The next morning we left the resort around 8.45 am. I still recall the Nativity display in the resort’s lobby. We sat in the Sumo and turned onto the East Coast Road towards Chennai. Just then the driver said, “Sir, I forgot. I had told you that I would take you to pick up the water from the church. Should I turn around?”
I don’t know what came into my head. Perhaps it was because we had a long drive ahead of us. I told him. “No. Let’s proceed to Chennai”.
We drove towards Nagapattinam on the coastal road. The road runs next to the Bay of Bengal. We could see the waters of the Bay, and coastal mangroves. We had driven the same route the previous day when we were going to Tanjore. About half an hour later we entered Nagapattinam town. We could see the road to Tanjore branching off to west. Suddenly, we saw traffic jammed up ahead of us.
Our driver got out to enquire about the reason for the jam. He came back with a quizzical look on his face. He said “I don’t know what has happened. But people are saying there is water on the road ahead of us”.
The day was a Full Moon day. Applying my “scientific” knowledge I confidently declared to him “It must be high tide”!
Little did I know what had happened!
The traffic was still not moving. So I took out my Nokia mobile phone (a novelty in those days), and called up the GM of the resort which we had just left. I told him that we were in Nagapattinam, and people were saying that there was water on the highway on the other side of town. Did he know anything about it?
What he told me knocked the wits out of me.
He said “you know the pilgrim camp on the beach that you saw yesterday? A wave has swept it away. Water came up to where the Pond in the church is located. And the wave was so high that it swamped the ground floor of the resort itself. I am on the terrace of the resort, and am trying to reach and find my staff. I have heard that there is water all the way to Orissa! Please leave the highway immediately and take the road inland to Tanjore if you can”.
Not really understanding what he had just told me I asked the driver to take the vehicle inland towards Tanjore.
Nagapattinam is a fishing town. The town, port and beach, all lay between the East Coast Road (on which we were stranded) and the Bay of Bengal. In other words, though we had driven to Nagapattinam along the coast, at this time we were probably inland from the Bay of Bengal by a couple of kilometres or so. The town lay between us and the Bay.
The driver had just started the vehicle and taken the road to Tanjore when all hell broke loose. Suddenly a large number of people were running out from the town. A man ran out with a cot on his head. Someone had a television set on his head. Someone else had a cooking gas cylinder on his head.
We were suddenly surrounded by a sea of people as we moved towards Tanjore.
A few kilometres out of Nagapattinam we saw a stream of police cars and ambulances, sirens wailing, rushing in the opposite direction.
We still could not understand what had happened. I called up our relatives in Chennai, at whose place we had planned to stay overnight before leaving for home the next day. Their home was close to the Marina Beach in Chennai. They had a late night Christmas party the night before, and my relative woke up because of my phone call. I told him the “water all the way to Orissa” story, and requested him to find out what he could.
He called me back ten minutes later and said “First, the watchman of my apartment building shouted at me. He said there had been an earthquake, and the whole building had shook. We were the only ones in the apartment building who would not wake up, though he rang the bell and banged on our door. All others had evacuated the building. Second, I tried to walk to the Marina. But the police has cordoned off the road to the beach and are saying the beach is swamped.”
This guy had worked for a consumer products company in his previous job, and knew folks at the ground level in various districts. He checked with them and again called me to say that there was large scale damage along the coast. We should forget the coastal road, keep going inland, and take the Trichy-Chennai highway to reach Chennai. In no case should we try to return to the coastal road.
Ok. So we knew what we had to do.
But what had happened?
The cell phone was a relatively new device at that time. I realised its utility in the next few hours.
I called a friend in Hyderabad. Turned out that he had been on a work trip to Africa, and had just landed at Hyderabad’s Begumpet Airport. He told me that the TV in the airport lounge had news about an earthquake in Indonesia, and because of that a “tidal wave” had hit India. He used the word “tsunami” also. I had heard it before, but did not really know what it meant. Over the next few hours he kept me posted with more information about the aftermath of the tsunami.
We finally reached Chennai late – around midnight. Tragically, just as we were entering Chennai, our driver got a call informing him that his sister back in Nagapattinam had got washed away by the tsunami.
The television was full of news of the tsunami. The devastation in Aceh, Indonesia was heartbreaking. Thousands had perished in Srilanka.
10,000 people perished in India due to the tsunami, and over 5000 remained missing. And we found out that the areas worst affected by the tsunami in India were Nagapattinam and Velankanni.
We would later come to know that of the 10,000+ confirmed deaths in India, 7,900 occurred in Tamil Nadu. And of these 7,900, more than 6,000 were in Nagapattinam. In Velankanni more than 600 pilgrims perished.
It was heartbreaking. Some communities along the coast were wiped out. Others took years to recover. Some have still not recovered now, 20 years later.
Personally, we were fortunate that we had just entered Nagapattinam town when the tsunami hit. We never saw the wave. We did not even see the “water on the road”. At no time were we in direct danger.
But humans are designed to assimilate and experience wider events through the prism of their own personal situation! The realisation hit that had we gone to the church to pick up the “healing water”, we might have been in the church when the tsunami hit it. If the tsunami had hit 5 minutes earlier, we would still be on the coastal road between Velankanni and Nagapattinam. Had it hit 15 minutes later, we would probably have crossed Nagapattinam and been on the coastal road to Cuddalore.
May be Our Lady of Velankanni saved us by telling us not to come back to the Church that fateful morning.
Our driver’s sister was not so lucky.
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