The Boxing Day of 2014 dawned like any other day for the inhabitants of the hamlets dotting the long coastline of Nagapattinam district.
Tourists were revelling on the Velankanni beach, noisy fish trading was on at the seashore market at Poompuhar and fishermen were mending nets or indulging in small chat at most of the coastal villages.
The lives of these unsuspecting people went for a tidal toss within minutes that morning as huge waves crashed on the villages, wreaking unprecedented havoc, death and destruction, to introduce the Japanese term tsunami into the Indian popular lexicon.
Nagapattinam district suffered the maximum loss in Tamil Nadu, as an enlisted 6,065 lives were lost while many more went missing. Nearly 175 children instantly became orphans and around 300 women turned widows. Thousands more became roofless in a span of just 45 minutes.
Scores of fishing villages from Nagore to Pazhayar, including Akkaraipettai, Keechankuppam, Seruthur, Tranquebar, Nagore and Poompuhar were nearly wiped out. Tsunami spared none as it wrought destruction around Velankanni Basilica, near Nagore Dargah and swept away people near the Akkaraipettai Mariamman temple.
At Velankanni, hundreds among the crowds enjoying the interregnum between Christmas and the New Year's Day met a watery grave. Several of them were from Kerala and elsewhere across the country. Hundreds of bodies remained strewn and partially buried in sand.
“When we returned after fishing that morning, we were aghast to find water everywhere in the villages. We realised that something abominable had engulfed our village and waded through chest deep waters to drag the dying and the dead to safety and shores. As I walked over corpses of men, women and children who were all my relatives, my inner self started trembling, a feeling that has never left me since then,” recalls R. Murugaiyyan (54) of Velankanni.
The rural economy went haywire — fishermen bore the brunt, salt pans at Vedaranyam were washed away and farmers in many villages suffered due to the salinity caused by sea water incursion.
For those who survived the horror, life was never the same again.
“For more than five months after tsunami, we did not venture out to the seas forsaking even our livelihood for fear of destruction. Still there is a haunting fear among most of us who endured that dreadful Sunday that the seas might turn in on us again,” shudders G. Dhandapani (30) of Seruthur, who escaped with injuries but lost his mother Sellammal who the waves felled at their hut a little away from the coastline.
Sad tales are still littered along the Nagapattinam coast.
