The Hindu Business Line : Waves of compassion

"Both Kumbakonam and this tragedy have taught me that death in individual families cannot be treated as a statistic. And you have to be sensitive to respond to the different emotional needs of people."

J. Radhakrishnan, Collector of Nagapattinam, surveys the scene at the tsunami-affected Akkaraipettai village

Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu took the maximum brunt of the ocean's fury on December 26 when giant tsunami waves crashed almost 2.5 km inland to devastate human beings, habitations and fishing boats that lay in the path. In the midst of the devastation and havoc that resulted, one figure stood out right from day one... that of the district Collector J. Radhakrishnan.

Actually, the man most familiar to the tsunami victims in Nagapattinam district, which took a hit at 77 places along the 187.9 km coastline and lost 6,063 people, was not even the Collector of that district on that eventful day. As Collector of Thanjavur, he got a call from Chennai at 11.30 a.m., asking him to rush to Nagapattinam. He did that and remained there to get the official posting only on January 10. Every TV channel and news story has featured the excellent work done by him, and in Akkaraipettai in Nagapattinam town, which suffered the most and is referred to as Ground Zero by Radhakrishnan, almost everybody knows him... not from media coverage but because he is seen at the spot even today.

Four weeks after the devastation, Life caught up with him to record his experience and what it has taught him; remember he was the Collector of the district when the Kumbakonam school fire burnt to death over 90 schoolchildren?

Even as his office buzzes with activity — the NGO co-ordination cell functions in the building, there is a constant stream of donors of all hues walking in to offer money, relief material, and sometimes to complain about bottlenecks hampering their generosity — Radhakrishnan recalled the mayhem and heartrending tales, the sheer magnitude of the tragedy and the challenges that faced him and the entire administration in the initial 10 days after the event.

On the important lessons he learnt from this catastrophe, he says, "I have learnt so many valuable lessons. One of course pertains to the trigger mechanism of the Government that speedily put in place 11 teams, each headed by an IAS officer, and supervised by Tamil Nadu ministers, that functioned as mini collectorates in the worst-hit areas. There was no dearth of money (he was sanctioned Rs 1 crore straightaway and authorised to take on-the-spot decisions to spend it) or equipment to restore infrastructure."

But more important for a government official, the tragedy has taught him "soft skills" when it comes to dealing with human beings. "Both Kumbakonam and this tragedy have taught me that death in individual families cannot be treated as a statistic. And you have to be sensitive to respond to the different emotional needs of people. To somebody who has lost a house but not dear ones, you can't say at least you and your family are alive. To another person who has lost his livelihood but not his house, you can't say at least your house is intact."

He recalls that in Akkaraipettai, barely four days after the tsunamis had hit the area, Vairam, a 25-year-old woman who had lost three children, gingerly approached him. "As I told her how sorry I was and that she will receive Rs 1 lakh as compensation for each child, I realised that this was not why she had come to me. Hesitatingly she asked me to confirm that a few women in Kumbakonam who had lost their children, had undergone recanalisation operations to reverse sterilisation. She wanted an assurance from me that such an operation could be done. So it is important to be there to address such concerns of people who have suffered."

Radhakrishnan headed Team No. 1 that worked in Akkaraipettai, the worst affected area. It had big thatched houses on the shore and almost all were flattened. "The biggest challenge was that 1.5 km from Akkaraipettai we had huge mechanised vessels blocking the road and the only bridge connecting this area to the rest of Nagapattinam had three huge boats blocking it. So on the first day we had to airdrop food. The second morning heavy rains started at 4 a.m. and when the weather cleared at 8 a.m., we dropped the food packets. Then we drilled a hole in one upturned mechanised vessel to make enough space to go across to the other side."

Nothing had prepared him for what lay on the Akkaraipettai beach. "As we walked across the flattened houses, we would trip over bodies. The beach was littered with corpses and there was no space to even walk. Even on the second day there was knee-deep water and the highway road had been cut by water that was knee deep. The first priority was to bury the bodies and this was done by putting them in mass graves along with chemicals for speedy decomposition. The death toll in Akkaraipettai and adjoining three hamlets was 2,000, and you are now walking on a mass grave," says Radhakrishnan, startling us while taking us around the devastated zone.

With huge mechanised trawlers tossed on the road, the army was pressed into service and an alternative road was put up using the debris created by the tsunamis. "For this two houses had to be demolished and we got the owners' consent after promising them new houses. With massive cutters the boats on the bridge were literally cut into pieces and the bridge cleared. Then the Navy did an aerial survey and gave us pictures of bodies lying in other areas so that they could be removed and buried immediately."

Walking around Akkaraipettai you notice rows of neatly laid out young saplings... of both coconut and casuarina. The fishing community, which long resisted advice to stay at least 500 metres from the high tide zone, despite periodic havoc caused by cyclones, has finally told the government that it no longer wants habitations so close to the sea. "They requested us to set up coconut and casuarina parks here... with the trees being a memorial for people who have died. Environmentalists have long said that such natural barriers are required along the coast, but for the first time the fisherfolk have asked for them," says the Collector.

But while the green barriers will come up eventually, the scars left on the minds and hearts of the survivors will take a long time to heal. For one thing, there is the fear of the sea and even fishermen whose boats have suffered minor damage that can be rectified easily are refusing to venture out. "That is going to be the next challenge and we are already telling them how those on the sea were safer than those on land. When nobody — particularly the media — is looking, I've found some fishermen going up to their boats and saying: `This kind of wood is available in Kerala and the boat can be repaired in this way... ' but their fear is that if they go back to fishing, they might not get the compensation from the government for their loss," says Radhakrishnan.

But in the meantime it is depressing to see the fishermen in entire hamlets just sitting around and idling... or hitting the bottle, drowning a major chunk of the relief funds their families so desperately need.

Once a proud lot, the worst thing that can overtake them is sloth and an acceptance of a life of charity. The tsunami waves have indeed brought in a wave of generosity from people in India and overseas. Thanks to powerful television images of a people totally broken, money and relief material is pouring in.

Sivasankari is of Indian origin and works for the Singapore Housing Board and has brought in a container of relief material worth Sing $10,000 raised from friends. She is agitated about the Port and Customs fees demanded for relief material. The Collector gives letters seeking exemption "allowed under the rules." Two Sikh gentlemen want to distribute Rs 1 lakh in cash; Radhakrishnan advises them against giving cash and says they could put up some temporary shelters instead. A.D.S.N. Prasad, Director of Pathway, an organisation for disabled and destitute children, walks in volunteering to take in orphans at the Rs 4-crore posh children's agro farm coming up in Kanchipuram district. Thanking him, the Collector says the orphans are currently being cared for by the government but he would certainly keep hisoffer in mind.

Every offer of help is noted down because the relief and rehabilitation task is huge before the district administration. Some corporates have also come forward to help; the Tatas have promised to build permanent houses in Akkaraipettai, committing a few crores; the Shanti Bhushan Trust has pledged Rs 10 crore to repair and renovate the Government Hospital in Nagapattinam, which was flooded by the seawater, and other promises too have been made. The administration is now identifying land — both private and public — where permanent houses can be built.

The tsunami waves inundated 73 habitations, directly affected 1.96 lakh people and 40,000 families lost their livelihood. Driving along the Nagapattinam coast one can see hectares after hectares of paddy fields turned stark black by the seawater that inundated them, destroying agricultural crops in 5,630 hectares and horticulture crops in 325.88 hectares. Add to this the damage incurred by 11,000 fishing craft, 5.66 lakh kg of fishing nets, the devastation caused to TNEB assets, 5 high school and 41 elementary school buildings, the total economic loss in Nagapattinam district is put at over Rs 700 crore.

Radhakrishnan says experiments are on to flush some of the agricultural land with fresh water, and the initial results have been encouraging. But one look at the black fields and your heart sinks, wondering how long it will take for these fields to sprout healthy green paddy or other crops once again.

While the tsunami has left its victims dazed and broken by their losses, both human and economic, in some areas in Nagapattinam town, particularly in the more prosperous fishing hamlets, the women who have been forced to submit to an existence of penury are angry, and understandably so.

A tsunami survivor

In the fishing hamlet adjoining Akkaraipettai we come across a group of women seated outside a two-storeyed house that survived the disaster. At present it houses seven families of siblings and relatives. Sanjala, a mother of two boys and one girl, had gone out of her house to fetch water on that fateful morning and her husband, 38-year-old Kandaswmay had gone to the coast, only to return as one of the several thousand bodies that Nagapattinam has buried. The future is a big question mark for her.

But not for Daivami, a relative, who is unsparing in her tirade against everybody. Hailing from a rich fishing family, she just cannot understand why she had to lose everything in her house. "People who are asking us to live in tin cages 15 ft by 20 ft should realise that all of us lived in houses that had assets worth at least Rs 3 lakh, in cash, jewellery and household items. You are asking us to eat curd rice and sambar rice today; but do you know that the week previous to the tsunami was particularly good and in most of our homes we had two meals consisting of not only fish but also chicken and mutton? You ask us to wear other people's old clothes but do you know that in most of our homes, there were at least 100 saris and 50 pounds in gold jewellery? You ask about the future; get us a little poison to decide that future. Or else, all of us should go and jump into the sea that took everything that belonged to us."

Taking a cue from her, Sanjala finds her voice. "We didn't live like salaried people do; on a budget. On a day the catch was very good, we would even spend Rs 500 on our food." Adds her mother-in-law Ranganayagi: "They've given us Rs 1 lakh for my son; I don't want the money, give me back my son."

The house is full of children... and most of them are playing on the shore, but you realise what a task it must be to feed seven families. When you suggest that there would be 28 people living in the house, Indirani says, "Oh no, there are more than 50 people here; I alone have six children. We never thought we had to think of family planning or sterilisation; the ocean gave us plenty of food to feed our children."

Each house has a story to tell; only it is expressed through different forms... hurt, anger, tears, desperation... And anybody listening and watching the devastation is likely to break down, at some point or the other.

The district Collector had his moment when the parents who had lost their children in the fire at the Kumbakonam school in July last year, came to him with a contribution of Rs 1.03 lakh. "On the second day when there were no people to remove the bodies, I have picked up bodies myself, as I did in Kumbakonam. But I did not cry then; nor did I cry when listening to so many stories of death and destruction. But when these people came to me, forgetting their own sorrow and made a contribution of Rs 1,000 each, that is the time I could not keep back my tears. I have not seen generosity like this... "

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

Pictures by Bijoy Ghosh

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