Searching questions

Like allies, the sea and the sky wore the same shade of livid blue the evening Arogyadas hopped onto a kerosene-operated plywood boat. Even in the company of 13 men, he felt alone as his son, a regular at the sea, was back at home recovering from a viral fever. His wife recalls the pleasant breeze that night and the weather, an assuring calm. While she drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep, her husband sailed into a nightmare, battling the winds that toppled his little boat and scattered the rest of the crew. The calm had deceived 90 fishermen, in 29 boats, to leave the safe shores of Poonthura, a fishing hamlet in Thiruvananthapuram, on the fateful night of November 29. Elsewhere that night, KM Abraham, Chief Secretary of Kerala, was tricked by a jargon that arrived as repeated warnings from the India Meteorological Department. A ‘deep depression’ was thus ignored.

Panic, like the morning, arrived slowly. Beginning with Arogyadas’s breakfast going cold and then, as the drizzle acquired a fierce temper, uprooting trees, the wind raging against roofs and, finally, setting in when the news reports christened the tragedy. Ockhi. Born on November 20. Birthplace, the Gulf of Thailand. In hordes, like ants marching away from a trampled hill, the villagers gathered on the shores by the afternoon. Dusk saw the coastguards, the navy, and the air force, along with the efficiency of a Boeing P8i and several Advanced Lightweight Helicopters, scan 250 nautical miles into the storm-struck sea. The men who’d survived the waves had swum away from the currents or held onto fragments of their boats, but only a lucky few were sieved out of the sea. For three days, surviving on a single meal, 57-year-old Arogyadas clung on to a log — which was all that was left of his boat — and hope.

“Neither the navy nor the air force, it was the church that found my father four days later,” says Suresh, the eldest of Arogyadas’s three children. He stands under the tarpaulin of a temporary pavilion erected for his father’s funeral. Behind him, inside his house, a woman reads out loud from the Bible.

“The doctor said my father was alive until an hour before they found him. He wasn’t mauled by the fish, his skin wasn’t swollen, his body was fresh.” Fresh is a word that comes easily to a fisherman.

Ever since the tsunami warning and timely evacuation in 2004 the community had unwavering faith in the government and the Met department’s predictions. Now, however, Suresh no longer wants to take chances. “I am the only breadwinner in my family now.” He pauses to help a neighbour, a 48-year-old mother of three who is being escorted by her teenage daughter to a nearby school that’s functioning as a camp, after she complains of chest pain. Her husband, Denise, was among the 13 who accompanied Arogyadas to the sea that night to never return.

“Why brave the sea and leave behind widows and orphans so that others can enjoy a good meal? To feed my wife and kids I will try another occupation. I’d rather sell betelnuts, learn to climb a coconut tree or become a mason,” Suresh tells me.

A few houses away, some women fan Amala Pushpa, another Ockhi widow. Earlier in the day she had lashed out at an official. Tears require energy, and she was already worn out, and alone. “We have received ₹10,000 from Matsya Fed and ₹10,000 from a bureaucrat as aid. Can they make up for their failure to give us a timely warning even if they pay us in lakhs?” Her husband, Lazar, was found by the coastguards four days after he ventured into the sea. Seven unidentified, unclaimed bodies had been hastily cremated at the city’s Government Medical College to make space for the dead that the sea had returned that day, including Lazar.

***

Those who survived continue to battle recurring waves of painful memories.

Whenever he closes his eyes, Muthappan continually hears a 16-year-old boy’s kindly voice. From the comfort of a hospital bed, Muthappan stretches out his hand and calls out in a frenzy, ‘ Ende ponnu makkale (my beloved child)’. A visiting relative grasps his hand and comforts him, saying all will be okay, but he remains in a stupor. When the coastguards found Muthappan he was wearing a colourful T-shirt that belonged to Vinish, the youngest fisherman that Poonthura lost in the Ockhi tragedy. Vinish had decided to join the boat crew at the last minute. His father was a kidney patient and his family depended on his earnings from fishing. As the sea grew turbulent, young Vinish had passed on his tee to the 52-year-old Muthappan, asking him to stay warm while he dove into the storm to help three men struggling in the water near an upturned boat close by.

The next minute, a wave the size of a skyscraper crashed over them.

Lying in the same ward, Clement says he realised it was the end when one such gigantic wave knocked over his catamaran. When his two friends failed to resurface, he sensed that the sea would take him next. He used a piece of rope to tie himself to the upturned boat and held a kerosene can in one hand, all the while chanting hymns. Several hours later, the 60-year-old was rescued by a mechanised boat from Tamil Nadu.

For Muthappan and Clement, the sea was where they grew up, grew old and, like circus animals that survive a lifetime on a single trick, they had planned to work their fishing nets for a living till their time came. How now will they learn to forgive the sea and venture back into the same depths that snatched away their dear ones?

Questions about destiny continue to crowd the space between the survivor and the lost, between the dead and the mourner. Had John Francis, a local fisherman, bagged a smaller catch the previous night he would have accompanied his nephew and faced Ockhi’s wrath. If Suresh hadn’t fallen sick he could have aided his father during the storm. Narrow escapes here are tainted with guilt.

***

Ten days have passed. The sky is now ripe yellow in Poonthura. The wind, a friend that flutters the many black flags and unites the voices from various closed doors singing ‘Ave Maria’. Tarpaulins have been raised on poles, and plastic chairs dragged out under their shade in every street. Food trucks patrol the grief-stricken town, where women have given up ladles and taken up rosaries.

Mary Angelos takes out a handful of rice from the bagful she was given after the tragedy. Tiny pests crawl and crowd her palm. “We may not own grand homes or have an air conditioner, but we live a good life. And eat Jaya rice (₹40 per kg) and cook in plenty of oil and spices the fish our men bring home,” she says. Mary, like many other women in the community, usually takes an early morning bus to sell fish at the Poojapura market in the city. She hasn’t done that for 10 days now, leaving her with no earnings, yet she is on her way to return the bag of infested rice that was distributed free.

The villagers like to narrate an 18-year-old story of Bensils and his son Sussayan, who miraculously returned after being stranded in the deep sea for 13 days. The last such major cyclone the State saw was in 1941, when 62 died and over 50,000 homes were destroyed.

***

Even at the peak of the blame game, nobody in Poonthura questions the Almighty. At the village’s 102-year-old church of Saint Thomas, which should ideally have been preparing to welcome Christmas this time of the year, two flex boards have been erected in a makeshift shed. One contains photographs and names of the village’s 29 missing fishermen, and the other has prayers for the four whose bodies were found. Alcoholics Anonymous has just finished distributing an afternoon meal to those huddled on the premises. Father Deepak has his back to the sea when he speaks, “The government failed to warn the fishermen, and another grave folly was that they did not agree to take along with them any of the fishermen from our community to help with the search.” In a small town like Poonthura, where everybody knows everyone else, the results of such a move would have been fruitful. On Sunday, the church helped the villagers gather boats, get walkie talkies and set out on their own search. But by then it was too late to rescue, to find their brothers alive.

Alexander’s four children play hide-and-seek outside the family’s rented house. The youngest, an eight-year-old, hides behind her father’s framed photograph, which has been placed on a stool in the front yard. “I told my kids their Papa went to the Gulf. They are now awaiting him patiently, without tears,” says Alexander’s widow, Alphonsa. At night, when they miss him the most, she makes each kid list out the things they want their father to bring back for them.

Crayons. Chocolates. Remote control car. A doll in a white gown.

It was Muthappan who saw Alexander’s boat toppling, and it was to save its occupants that Vinish and his friend had dived into the sea. Alphonsa, 32, has studied only up to Std III and now has to singly care for her four young children, including one with special needs. “Muthappan says he saw the sea divide and take my husband in. How do I harbour any hope?”

The same night had widowed her sister, as well, whose husband had returned safe on Thursday morning only to be called by a fellow fisherman to go in search of the missing men. He got up without finishing his breakfast and went to the sea, never to return again.

Alphonsa leans onto a wall, which is painted pink and crowded with pencil scribbles. Beside her, like a framed painting, through the small rectangle of a window, the sea enters their home, like an innocent, grieving family member.

Akshaya Pillaiis a journalist based in Thiruvananthapuram

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