Visit to Nagapattinam, Karaikkal and Velankanni

I had been to Nagapattinam, Karaikkal and Velankanni for 4 days with a couple of my colleagues and few other people from outside. We were taken by an NGO.

We went there on Tuesday night (Wed 3am). The NGO (human Rights Protection Front) that took us was more interested in taking pictures and making news about itself as an organisation rather than planning and co-ordinating some relief work. It was sad that there are organisations like these at this point of time.

We broke up with them and registered ourselves as freelance volunteers with the NGO coordination committee in the collector's office. These guys were doing amazingly well in coordinating and planning and executing the relief work. There are hundreds of NGOs lined up in Nagapattinam doing relief work. There is no shortage of stocks or funds. In fact there is quite a bit of excess rice and dal.

First day our group was asked to go to a relief camp and spend some time with the kids. We played cricket and football with the kids. There was an American, who had come to Bangalore to start a BPO, in our group. The children had a nice time with him and they enjoyed the evening.

The next day we went out to various villages to collect reports about the relief materials that have reached them and the materials that they need. These reports were submitted to the NGO coordination committee so that they could arrange for the required materials to be delivered the next day.

On this day we got to interact with the villagers directly and we visited places of ruins which had once been their homes. Villages around Nagapattinam have been the worst hit. The scenes that you get to see there are really devastating.

The government has acted fast and acted well. They have built temporary shelters wherever possible. There are lotof camps all over the villages. Each camp has a couple of people appointed for cooking food. They get a good supply of rice and dal. Other than that the NGOs are doing a great job of distributing mats, bed sheets, stoves and all other essential things. All these false stories by SUN TV that nothing has reached the people is all total bullshit. It is a pity that these people are playing petty politics at this juncture.

The people were just plainly afraid to stay in their homes any more. We were just talking to people and sort of counselling them that they need not be afraid of the sea and tsunamis come only once in hundreds of years and warning systems are now in place etc.

What people in many villages told us was that more than the rice and dal they get, they wanted to get back their fishing equipment so that these people can get back to their normal life. But this might take a lot of time as the good boats cost around Rs.75,000 each.

There were some unfortunate things happening there as well.

The upper caste people had sent out the harijans from the relief camps. They didnt want them staying with them. These people have come out and started a camp of their own. But these people dont get as much supplies as the other camps. This was really pathetic and we gave whatever stuff we carried with us to this camp.

The other worse thing that was happening was some of the govt. officials taking away stuff that have come for relief. Some of you must have seen Burkha Dutt of NDTV with a camera chasing a govt official who was unloading stuff in his private place. The police have also done their part of taking stuff from the trucks. These people dont seem to have any conscience. But overall the collector's office is doing a great job and things are moving real fast.


The next day we took up a village called 'Vellaikoil' and we decided to clean up the place with the help of local people. Some people had become slightly lazy now that they get food when they are sitting simply. But they did not even have a knife to clean up the place. Everything had been washed away. So we got some tools like shovel, crowbar, sickle (adhaan namma manvetti, gadapaarai, aruvaa) and took some volunteers from their group and cleaned up some part of the village i.e. some houses that could still be used for living. We wanted to do this as this could keep them busy and they could get away from their usual routine of sitting around and chatting about tsunami over and over again. We gave them the tools so that they could continue cleaning things up. Hopefully some of them would get back their homes this way.

The stories that we get to hear over there from people really haunts us for quite some time. There was a little girl of 6 years who was smiling all the time. She was caught in the tsunami and had clung to the roof using a small rope and had got on top of the roof. She had water to her waist while standing on the roof. There are hundreds of stories like this.

The farmers who were waiting for the harvest during pongal time have lost all the 6 months work. These lands cannot be used for cultivation for at least another year as salt water has entered deep into it.

The desperate cry of these people who have lost every single thing except their lives just moves our hearts.

Though we cannot bring back lost lives, we can certainly hope that these people get back their livelihood as soon as possible. The government is taking this as an opportunity to build them better houses and that is a good gesture. Hopefully things will improve for them soon.