Adarsh Misra, IAS, AGMUT
Apart from taking State wise stock of damage caused by the Tsunami of 2004, Planning Commission was tasked with designing the reconstruction and rehabilitation and I was asked to projectise and secure funds for the same. Lakhs of people had suffered loss of lives, limbs, livestock and land in the wake of the fury from the sea. Large parts of coastal Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and many islands of Andaman and Nicobar Islands were amongst those affected. While implementation of different components was being handled by respective Ministries, a consultation with the affected people was launched and I accompanied the Member Planning Commission for an exhaustive consultation with the people both in Tamil Nadu and in A&N Islands.
The despair, desolation and loneliness, the lack of comprehension of our questions on what they needed to re-establish themselves was writ large on their faces. In Andaman and Nicobar Islands many Islands had got submerged under the sea. Even flying over the emerald sea, one could make out the outlines of many such places sunk under the sea.
I have tried to capture some of these images in the poems below:
Champin from Trinket and Kamorta
Dull the shadows of despair
Grey the etching of sorrow
dark the eyes that witnessed
The desolation of life that was
Shorn the leaves of the coconuts
Strewn the rocks of comfort
crumbling the façade of the house
surging the sorrow still
surf chilling the contours of hope
ships come and go
passing the corner of Safed Baalu
from where Michael swam across to Kamorta
the thud of the volleyball across from the shadow
of sunken Trinket village
an island engulfed in water
slowly the pieces sinking below
like mirrors in the unconscious
and nere a bubble will rise
At Champin the leaves are all strewn
The trees slanted over
Reaching over to cover the cemetery of debris of past lives
Broken bricks and mortar
the hollows of the houses amidst the debris of lives that were
The criss cross of the waves and the clouds
Like a shadow
On the tapestry of faces
Annie
Angelina
Marianne
Sitting with their arms across their knees
Silent their wake
Eyes blank as bewilderment
In the morning after the sun kisses the tears dry
And sapphire spreads like glass on the ocean
Boat trip to Champin
Ayesha of the luminous eyes
With pink orbs reflecting the rising full moon
Captain of the Nancowrie group of isles
long used to command
Rani she too like her
her grandmother who had ruled the tribe
Softly churns up despair
As she scores the horizon
Peering deep into the depths
as the ship crosses over
seeking seeking answers
looking still for the lost and missing
Katchal to Kamorta
The flat sea calm now that the young are deep below its sheen Playfully glinting its sapphire in the surf now gently calling the remaining young many in its hold forever asleep after the angry morning in and around the emerald isles and as the chopper flies over trinket island now engulfed and now emerging at safed baalu where Michael and his family were keeled over before they braved the wall of water and landed at Kamorta and Annie outside the shelter with her arms around her knees keeping them, her only possessions, safe and Angelina with blank eyes of bewilderment wondering at our questions about a permanent home the incomprehension in the eyes which had witnessed impermanence now being asked questions banal as ‘informed choice’ regarding sound design, capable of withstanding 9.0 Richter scales struggling to communicate that the sea will not let anything stay on this land.
Under the festooned tent strung up with bamboo leaves streamers of colored papers and flags made of soft and loud colored cloth a mute two in one on the corner of the table where sits Johann, the bridegroom with laughing face next to him sits Marianne with tears as long and narrow as the needle-sharp leaves of the drooping coconut. Her eyes still looking long and far away for the mother last seen in the swirl and swish of the wave and the surf the wet of the sea in her eyes as she looks for the father who was to give her away. Waiting for the priest she still mourns unable to leave behind her past even as she prepares for her future. Wet the rain as we greet and congratulate her still limp her response to our warmth and wishes, her demeanor the etching of the desolation of the make shift Japantikri, her makeshift home. Where she and her sister are now the mute survivors of a family of five A strange wedding on a strange land unfamiliar the contours of paths not yet tread.
