The Hindu Business Line : With heads above water

AMID all the news of death and destruction following the killer tsunami, there are several extraordinary stories of gritty survivors and providential escapes. Like the one Sharad Singhi, a Chennai-based garment exporter, and his family and friends had at a camp site right on the beachfront on the picturesque East Coast Road.

Christmas Day was Singhi's birthday; he had just returned from a business trip to Colombo and decided to spend the weekend with family and friends at Silver Sands Adventure Zone, a campsite amidst a casuarina grove close to the beach. The next day more friends were to join the party. To live it up, Singhvi had taken along his home theatre system and a WorldSpace radio set. He had collected his car, which was being repaired after an accident from the service station just the previous day. He was all set; only he didn't reckon with Nature's fury.

There were five adults and four children who pitched a tent at the campsite for the night. Around 8.15 a.m., a group of about 10 youth, who too had spent the night on the beach, left. Just in time, Singhi recalls. At 8.55 a.m., he went over to the cook at the kitchen camp to enquire about the pongal-vada for breakfast when he heard his wife, Latha, scream about the water coming across the beach.

Within seconds, a body of water had engulfed the camp. It was pell-mell then. Singhi's wife and daughter ran through the water to a new cottage building, which was being put up, and hauled themselves up. By this time, the water had risen close to six feet. His friend, Pramod, couldn't swim, but managed to grab the branch of a casuarina tree. Pramod's wife, Sheela, whose sari got stuck in a tree, was rescued by Singhi, who counts himself a good swimmer. That helped him to rescue his friend's daughter who was almost drowning and move her to the building.

His son, meanwhile, had run up to the East Coast road — which they didn't know for several traumatic moments till they got to the road later. His Sri Lankan friend, Madhusha Fernando, who was still asleep in the tent, was aroused by the commotion and managed to run up to the road, which is on a higher plane.

The ordeal, Singhi recalls, lasted about 45 minutes. The water came in in three bouts before it receded, but not entirely as they had to wade through almost four feet of water with nothing but the clothes they had on. "Only the trees and the building saved us," he recalls, still traumatised by it.

The two cars, a Santro and an Indica, which they came in, were pushed almost 200 metres away. So was a heavy freezer from the kitchen.

The group walked almost seven km to a toll booth without food and water before they could summon another vehicle to pick them up from home.

Between his Sri Lankan friend and him, they lost several hundred dollars and rupees, not to mention cell-phones, cameras and several other gizmos. And his car's back at the service station. But, as Singhi says, a small price to pay for being able to stay alive.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Fog on track

Budgetline floorings

Life afloat

With heads above water

The sea hath fish for every man