Trip to Tsunami affected areas

The prologue would better be explained by Saravana Moorthy(a buddy classmate at college who works for Infosys now) who was there from the beginning of this plan. I am giving a note though from what I heard from him.

After the mail from Saravana on Dec 29, funds started pouring in and so did old clothes. A project manager at HCL provided with 300 Kgs of rice. Saravana's colleagues went out to purchase medicines, utensils, stoves, mat, notebooks, dhal, oil and other provisions to be distributed. The provisions and old clothes were dumped at Jigar, Balaji and Mayur's(all colleagues of Saravana) houses. Most of the clothes were segregated as men's, women's and kids wear. Infosys was no exception, some old clothes were there for us to collect enroute Cuddalore. They booked a tempo to carry all of these to Cuddalore. The plan was set to start at 5:00 AM on Jan 02.

I called up Saravana on Dec 28 and expressed my wish to join them. In the evening, he confirmed that I can join them. I waited for Saravana at 11:30 PM before Wang's Kitchen, Adyar to pick me up to his friend's house for the night. We reached Jigar's house. We slept around 1:00 AM after sorting out the some of the old clothes.

The van reached Jigar's house at 5:20 AM. We started loading the provisions(rice, mat, dhal, oil, medicines) in the van. We were accompanied by Puneet, Balaji, Koushik, Srinivas etc at Jigar's house. We then boarded the van to Balaji's house when we loaded the stoves, some old clothes etc. We then moved on to Mayur's house to take in a load of old clothes. On the way we picked up a lot more old clothes at Infy, Sozhinganallur. On the way, we bought some more utensils at Pondycherry. In all we had provisions to supply to around 80-90 families.

The activities were planned to be carried out as directed by Mr. Arunachalam, an advocate at Cuddalore. He is a Rotarian and had the list of villages affected, number of families in those villages, the details of provisions that have reached the village etc. We reached his home by 1:30 PM. He directed us to a village named Annangkovil which is 30 Kms from Cuddalore and we were accompanied by two localites who know the place. We picked up another VHP activist at Periyapattu for helping us out.

On the way, we crossed many affected villages. Notable among them is Pudhukuppam where the casualty is nearly 120. The houses in this village are about 30 to 40 feet from sea. We could see the sand strains on the walls of the houses which indicated the water raised up to 5 or 6 ft when the tsunami hit the place. We met a girl in her late teens who had lost both her parents. We provided her with some rice, utensils and a stove. We could see a lot of private tempos there and people distributing provisions there. We then set out further.

We reached our destination Annangkovil. We met people there. There was another christian missionary which camped there and was doing an analysis of the needs of the people there. We talked to them to understand the situation. We met the village head and received the list of families in that village which counted to 38. We asked them to assemble in a queue to receive the provisions. Srinivas was taking care of this, while other guys lined up in sorting out the provisions. The distribution started and every family is provided with one set of provisions that we carried. We distributed milk powder to families with small kids. Old clothes were also distributed on request from the residents there. We gave the 10 pots we had to the village head to be used as a common property of the village.

When we talked to people there, we came to know that people who are not really affected pose to be one in order to receive these provisions. We had to be careful to make sure that things really go to those who are in need. We expected around 60-70 families in this village. Since we had more provisions left with us, we set out to the next village.

In the next village, we talked to a policeman who was deputed there and he informed that the village was not very affected. To confirm things we took a walk around to see the damages. Though the damages were not much, there were two casualties. We gave provisions only to those two families. It was almost dark by that time. We decided to head off to Cuddalore and leave the rest back at Mr.Arunachalam's house and ask him to distribute the materials. On the way back, myself and Saravana decided to stay back and distribute the rest to other affected villages. We talked to the two localites who accompanied us about other villages in the vicinity where help is needed the most. They informed us about few villages near Chidambaram and we decided to go there.

Meanwhile Saravana called up Balamurugan aka Bunn(a native of Bunrutty and EEE batchmate of mine) to inquire if he could join us. He pleasantly accecpted the offer and promised to join us at Cuddalore the same night. We reached Cuddalore and when we informed Mr.Arunachalam of our new plans, we were offered accomodation in a classroom at Hindi Prachar Sabha that is under his control. We unloaded all materials except the old clothes at a storehouse that belongs to him. The rest of the guys left with the old clothes in the tempo heading towards Chennai. Bunn soon joined us and we headed for the dinner. After the dinner, each of us called home to inform the change of plans. We had a nice chit-chat for sometime before we dozed off.

We woke up at 5:30 AM in the morning and we were all set to leave by 6:30 AM. The tempo came in and we loaded it with the provisions left after the first day. We picked up one of the localites and the VHP activist at Periyapattu on the way to Chidambaram. The villages that we targetted for the day are Murasalodai, MGR Thittu and Chinnavaaykaal(all near Killai, a town 30 Kms from Chidambaram). The trip early morning was idyllic with plush green fields all the way with canals in between carrying lot of water. The irony is to see such pleasant nature causing disharmony somewhere.

We reached Killai on time and learnt from the Government officials that people from MGR Thittu and other villages are housed in marriage halls and schools in Killai. After hearing that the village head has gone out and it might take some time for him to return, we headed to the actual villages to see the impact of the tsunamis. We travelled on the tempo towards MGR Thittu. We could see that the waves had reached land that is at least 1 Km away from sea. The van went uptil Muzhukkuthurai, a village on the banks of a river. And now we were shocked to learn that MGR thittu is an island amidst sea. It is surrounded by sea on two sides and river on the other two sides. The only way to reach MGR thittu is by a boat. When the tsunamis were on, the village was under water for sometime. We went walking into the streets of Muzhukkuthurai to meet the few souls that are there. The residents have come back to collect any property still left in the rubbles. They collect the remains and then go back to the schools where they are housed. We talked to a person who was in 5 ft of water holding on to a pillar when the first tsunami hit that place. He informed us that people were literally running for life when they heard lot of noise from MGR Thittu and the sound of the waves approaching them. They have run for 3 Kms to a place which is much higher than sea level. We came to know that the toll is 100+ in MGR Thittu and 11 in Muzhukkuthurai.

We headed back to Killai having decided that we would give the rest of the provisions to the residents of MGR Thittu. We had to wait for some time before the village head appeared. We talked to him about the situation now and their plans further. He informed us that there are still 10 people whose whereabouts are not yet known. He also said that they cannot go back to that place as it is not safe and that they have buried most of the dead there. He said that they have decided upon some 20 acres of land which is 3 Kms north from Muzhukkuthurai and also said a private party has promised to pay for the land. He also informed us that the government has disbursed 1 lakh rupees to the familes where there was a casualty and 4000 rupees, 60 Kgs of rice, kerosene and other provisions to familes that have lost home and property.

When we expressed our wish to distribute the provisions that we brought directly to the individuals, he said that would cause confusion as it would create an uneven situation amongst them. He requested us to desposit everything with them so that when they get enough of provisions for all the families they would divide and distribute them. We could understand his reason and obliged his request. We unloaded all the provisions we had and handed it over to him. We were all set to head back to chennai carrying nothing but satisfaction of completing the job at hand.

I would like to thank everyone of them who was part of this entire effort from the contributors to the motivators. I pray God to give the affected ones the strength to carry on. I pray God for the souls to rest in peace. I pray God that such a thing never happens again.

Finally before I close, here is a word for contributors. From what we saw, we believe that the affected areas have enough of provision that could carry them on for another 2 months. All that they need is a place to reside by their own, equipments to resume their profession which is mainly fishing. I feel the goverment has done well in the short term. The long term recovery will only be possible with government taking efforts to get them their abode back and help them stand by themselves. Donate generously.

We still had some funds left over, which we have decided to send to Andaman & Nicobar Islands.