The Hindu Business Line : Hanging on to fear, and favour

HOMELY MEMORIAL: R. Vaiyapuri mourns the loss of his wife in the tsunami at Akkaraipettai by placing betel leaves and jasmine where their house once was. — Bijoy Ghosh

Recently in Nagapattinam

IN Nagapattinam's Akkaraipettai, district Collector J. Radhakrishnan is showing us around the devastated areas he calls `Ground Zero.' The fishing hamlet located bang on the coast has been flattened. Suddenly, we come across a grey-haired man, around 60 years old, performing a ceremony of sorts. Seeing the Collector he rushes forward and invites us to take part.

Before December 26, R. Vaiyapuri was an affluent fisherman; he owned a mechanised boat and his house held a colour TV, VCD player and other appliances. The morning the tsunami struck, he had gone inland and his wife was in the house. "She got washed away along with the house. I returned home to find everything gone. We were married for 28 years," says the man, who is still in a daze.

In his hands he clutches tiny packets; as the `ceremony' begins we find that one holds a string of jasmine flowers ("She loved wearing mallipu") and the other a few betel leaves. "All the time she would chew betel-nut," says Vaiyapuri. We don't have the heart to ask him if she is one of those buried in the mass grave nearby. He has created a small brick memorial on the ground where his house once stood. There, with great tenderness, he places the flowers and the betel leaves.

In the tsunami-ravaged areas of Nagapattinam and Cuddalore, each house has a tragic tale to tell. Perhaps, it is the scale of the tragedy that has brought with it unprecedented waves of compassion and generosity from those who escaped its wrath. "I am amazed by the ordinary people who have rushed forward to help," says Radhakrishnan. "Even today people are coming and asking I want to give this or do that. We had young students from Mumbai who rushed here with some relief material. People from all over India, cutting across caste and community, have come to help; I feel this period of great tragedy has helped unite us."

His counterpart in Cuddalore, Gagandeep Singh Bedi, agrees. "We talk of the Cauvery water rivalry, but would you believe it, the maximum relief material has come from Karnataka, followed by Punjab. The other day somebody from Punjab brought Rs 5 crore worth of material by train to Nagapattinam and Cuddalore. There was a report on me in The Tribune and a lot of cheques were sent to me. There are some Sikhs in Punjab who are waiting to build permanent houses for people whose homes were washed away; they say we are ready, give us the land."

Bedi adds that the administration is in the process of identifying the land. One bright spot in the gloomy scenario is that fishermen who earlier had no rights to the land will now get pattas and safe brick-and-mortar houses located not-so-dangerously close to the coast.

As for corporate help, he says HLL wants to build houses in Sonamkuppam, in Cuddalore Old Town, and the Birla group in Palamkuda, each pledging a minimum of a couple of crores. Bank of Punjab, CavinKare and HP too are lending a hand. "I was touched by two Swiss girls studying in Pondicherry who came to me with Rs 20,000, saying: `This is our savings, please take it.'"

In Nagapattinam, too, the Shanti Bhushan Trust has promised Rs 10 crore to renovate the General Hospital, half of which was flooded; corporates have also promised help.

Both the Collectors agree that after the relief phase comes the bigger challenge of rehabilitation and restoration of livelihoods. Bedi, who himself was at the TTDC in Mamallapuram on December 26 — and managed to save his two daughters, aged 1 and 2 years, "with great difficulty when the waves came" — rushed back to Cuddalore "as I knew that if this was the state here, Cuddalore would be much worse."

While wishing that such a tragedy never recurs, he says it has "give me a lifetime of experience."

On the challenge of convincing the fishermen to return to sea, both the administrators face a strange problem. Apart from the psychological scars that the tsunamis have left behind, there is another problem. The community feels that once they get back to routine life, the relief pouring in from both governmental and voluntary organisations will stop.

As a representative of Oxfam puts it: "They feel that a huge fortune is awaiting them in terms of a rehabilitation package which will disappear once they show they are capable of resuming work."

But Radhakrishnan is confident that soon the fishermen will realise that no help is better than self-help and return to the sea, as some have already done. He says in many cases there is a genuine difficulty "in that the fishing vessels have been damaged so badly that it will take time to repair them. But slowly, they are coming and telling me in private conversations while touching their damaged boats lovingly: `This kind of wood is available in Kerala. ... We know a carpenter in Kerala who can do a good job in repairing our boats.' They are also discussing among themselves how they can get into a group and hire a carpenter for repairing 10 to 15 boats at a stretch."

He adds: "We are also working on them psychologically by constantly telling them that the damage was done on land and not on sea; so there is nothing to fear from the sea."

Meanwhile, a depressing sight is to watch hordes of fishermen whiling away their time in the fishing hamlets in both the districts. As they sit around chatting away through the day, the concerns of their women can be understood. Many of them complain that a good portion of the Rs 4,000 each family has got in cash from the government is being spent on alcohol. A new addiction is the last thing these devastated families can take on.

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rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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Hanging on to fear, and favour