A forlorn story of Tsunami

Port Blair, Dec 27: It was just another day for Kottaisamy. He never required a siren to think about those who were swept away by the giant Tsunami waves on the Boxing Day two years ago.

Kottaiswamy, has been an eyewitness to the tragedy, which left an indelible scar on his soul. He lost his parents and a sister to the tidal waves. Luckily for him his brother too survived the catastrophe.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands remembered those, who were swept away by the cruel waves, by holding special prayers and keeping a two-minute silence for which sirens blowed at 0630 hrs yesterday.

Kottaisamy never had seen it all sitting at the roof of a temple in remote Kachal Island.

''I came out from my house early in the morning for fishing on the day and when I was going back an earthquake jolted us. We started running and soon giant waves came, crushing everything. We ran and climbed the roof top of a nearby temple and thus my life was saved,'' recalls Kottaisamy.

''Their bodies could not be found again,'' Kotaiswamy told UNI.

He, along with his bother Muthu and other six-tsunami orphans, live in Seva Niketan, a home situated at Port Blair, the capital city of Andamans.

A student of standard XII, who had alread witnessed the scariest nightmare of his life, still did not forget to smile and retains his will to survive.

In 2004, when tsunami struck, Kottaisamy was in tenth standard.

Despite all odds, he cleared his examination and in 2007 he would be facing CBSE XII board examination.

''I want to join Teacher's Training Institute in Port Blair after my XII and want to be a teacher,'' he said, during a programme ''Tsunami Ke Do Warsh Ki Smriti Main'' organised by Chetna, an NGO working at the Islands at Seva Niketan yesterday.

''When he came for the first time here his behaviour was abnormal. We could understand his trauma. He used to sit alone and think for hours. Sometimes, he wanted to go back to his islands but slowly he became normal and started mixing up with other children,'' Secretary of Seva Niketan Rishikesh said.

A senior government official in Andaman's Department of Science and Technology, Rishikesh voluntarily works for Seva Niketan. When Kottaisamy and other children came to the home, Rishikesh and his colleagues used to counsel them for hours. ''I find them absolutely normal now. Of course they remember their parents but they are happy here,'' the proud secretary of Seva Niketan said.

Kottaisamy remembered his best friends at Kachal Island ''Nagnathan, Arun Kumar, Karthik'' two of them were also killed in Tsunami.

''We used to have fun in our islands and used to go for fishing often,'' he sadly remembers his old days but the next moment, his eyes glitter, ''I have got some good friends here in Port Blair. Some are there in my school and some are here with me in Seva Niketan.'' The dark shy boy is waiting for February, when he heard some of his relatives from Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu would come down to Port Blair to meet him with a special gift, some old photographs of his parents and sister.

''They had sent me one photograph of my parents earlier but one is not enough. I kept that photo in my room,'' he said.

More than 3500 people in this remote archipelago died due to the catastrophic waves. According to reports, there were 54 orphans left by the 2004 tsunami and out of which eight from Kachal were given shelter by Seva Niketan .

Raju, another tsunami orphans and a friend of Kottaisamy, dreams of becoming doctor and returning to his remote village Kachal to serve the people there.

These eight children, who lost their everything in cruel waves two years back, were now living happily with the rest 72 children of Seva Niketan like a family.

But often their eyes tell the story of their heart. A little girl Sitamma, another tsunami orphan, often looks upset. Two years back when she was brought in Seva Niketan, she was four-year-old and used to cry for her mother and run out of the gate hoping to see her parents.

''Even if God comes down, he cannot give them back what these children have lost in Tsunami. We are trying our best to give some comfort to them,'' said the secretary of Seva Niketan.

UNI