Bangalore-Chennai-Chidambaram-Cuddalore-MGR Thittu

January 17th, 2005  |  Published in Tsunami disaster  |  15 Comments

A quick update and a bunch of pho­tos. We drove about 1300 odd kilo­me­tres in 3 days, trav­el­ling from Bangalore-Chennai-Chidambaram-Cuddalore. And then beyond Cud­dalore to a few vil­lages in and around the area. We crossed over to a really beau­ti­ful island vil­lage called MGR Thittu, lit­er­ally swept away by the tsunami. The peo­ple have all relo­cated to the shore and are in relief camps. The women still fear the water, but the men­folk want to go back and resume their fish­ing activ­i­ties as we found out talk­ing to them.

After spend­ing the whole of Sat­ur­day in Cud­dalore, we started back for Chen­nai late evening. Kiruba’s car couldn’t take it any­more and broke down around mid­night. His car had to be aban­doned since there was no way we would find a mechanic at that time of the night. Kiruba and all his fel­low pas­sen­gers had to halt a bus on the way (some­where near Pondicherry) to get back to Chennai.

It was an event­ful trip. Some pho­tographs taken with a digicam.

(Warn­ing: Pho­tos are from flickr.com so it might take a while to load)

The scenic route: Ban­ga­lore to Chen­nai. This is in the morn­ing, about an hour after we set off and the sun makes an appearance. AID India in Chen­nai had sug­gested we carry games and sports stuff for kids as they love vol­ley­ball and cricket in this area. We join a gang of kids for a game of cricket in Kil­lai village. After talk­ing to locals, we decided to make it to MGR Thittu, an island about 1/2 km from the shore. A set­tle­ment of 100 fam­i­lies and the death toll is about 65, with 5 still miss­ing. We are taken across by a cata­ma­ran by two boat­men — Anbazha­gan and Ari­vazha­gan. His wife is also trav­el­ling with us. they have lost a daugh­ter called Reenu. A lady who has lost all her belong­ings tell us how she saved her three chil­dren. Her small­est one nearly drowned, but she caught her by her hair and pulled her to safety. She is rel­a­tively well off as her belong­ings out­side — TV, grinder, per­fumes etc. — sug­gest. And she refuses to take any money, after treat­ing us all to coconut water. Cows come and con­gre­gate on the beach every­day, swim­ming about half a kilo­me­tre from the shore to the island. Half the cat­tle folk per­ished and the ones who sur­vived come back here every­day because they were raised on the island, the vil­lage folk tell us. Many of them have lost their owners. Remains of the day: An upturned chair on the beach. The gang, sur­vey­ing the beau­ti­ful beach in the island, now scat­tered with debris. A fam­ily (the lady we met ear­lier) recov­er­ing what­ever it could from the debris and car­ry­ing it back to the shore in a boat. Art activ­i­ties with the kids of MGR Thittu who are all now dis­placed from their island. They are delighted with the crayons and paper and imme­di­ately get to work! Chi­tra (extreme right) encour­ages the kids… Lunch break at Hotel Pallavi, Chi­dambaram. On the left, Suman and Nanda review­ing the pictures. We dis­trib­uted 4 sets of fish­ing nets and para­pher­nelia to a few vil­lagers from Pil­lamedu — Govin­dan (the vil­lage head), Pan­di­ara­jan, Velayud­ham, Rajagopal and San­jeev Gandhi. They stay at the relief camp at Kil­lai vil­lage near the Kil­lai Police station. Late evening we come back to Chi­dambaram. We decide to make a quick visit to the famous Chi­dambaram tem­ple. Nanda even got us into the inner sanc­tum of the tem­ple. A view of the beau­ti­ful relief work on a rath out­side the famous and huge Chi­dambaram temple. The Maha­balipu­ram Shore Tem­ple was not badly affected but the area around it bears proof of the dam­age done. 80 shops just out­side were totally destroyed. Foot­prints on the sand of time, Shore Temple. Relief camps dot­ting the scenic East Coast Road. On the East Coast Road, while return­ing from Maha­balipu­ram is the Croc­o­dile Bank. This was started in 1976 by her­petol­o­gist Romu­lus Whitaker to pro­tect India’s dwin­dling croc­o­dile pop­u­la­tion and to pre­serve the snake catch­ing. This bank has already pro­duced more than 6,000 croc­o­diles. And around 5000 of them lolling around in dif­fer­ent posi­tions. Quite an experience. The Rajiv Gandhi memo­r­ial at Sripe­rumbedur, on the Bangalore-Chennai route, built in the spot he was assas­si­nated in 1991.

- Nanda’s photo essay
– Suman’s detailed report of the trip

We would like to take this ahead and iden­tify how we can con­tinue to help, pos­si­bly by try­ing to con­cen­trate on one vil­lage. The prime worry for the fish­er­men is reha­bil­i­ta­tion and get­ting back their liveli­hood — start­ing off with boats and fish­ing nets — which will allow them to get back to the sea.

Responses

1. Kishore says:
   

   January 17th, 2005 at 4:19 pm (#)

   Kudos! to all u guys … keep the good work going :)

2. anita says:
   

   January 17th, 2005 at 7:54 pm (#)

   thanks kishore. i do hope more and more peo­ple pitch in what­ever way they can.

3. Prashant says:
   

   January 17th, 2005 at 9:50 pm (#)

   hey, you guys are doing a great job… thanks from every­one who wants to help out in the way you are but cant..

4. Sam says:
   

   January 18th, 2005 at 12:07 am (#)

   Good job guys. I hope this will be an inspi­ra­tion for more peo­ple to get involved. Keep up the good work.

5. Reflex says:
   

   January 18th, 2005 at 10:03 am (#)

   Peo­ple like me just blog about it, but peo­ple like you Anita, Kribs, Suman, Chi­tra and oth­ers are into action. Excel­lent work. God bless you all.

6. Twilight Fairy says:
   

   January 18th, 2005 at 2:07 pm (#)

   that’s great work u are doing! BTW I cdnt open the link for nanda’s photo essay… I get a 404.

7. Srikanth says:
   

   January 18th, 2005 at 2:38 pm (#)

   Con­grats on the great work Anita.

   Its great to be a “first hand” help to all those required.

   –Srikanth

8. anita says:
   

   January 18th, 2005 at 3:29 pm (#)

   prashant: thanks. i def­i­nitely hope that more peo­ple will pitch in with what­ever they can.

   thanks sam and reflex.

   twi­light: thanks. and i’ve fixed the link too…

   thanks srikanth.

9. Ravi says:
   

   January 18th, 2005 at 5:06 pm (#)

   Inspir­ing stuff, Anita! Kudos to all of you!

10. suman says:
    

    January 18th, 2005 at 5:41 pm (#)

    ‘Fish­ing nets and para­pher­na­lia’ Liked it. :) Hope Kribs did too.

11. bablu says:
    

    January 19th, 2005 at 4:38 pm (#)

    Good work guys…

    “Doing the small­est good deed is better

    that the great­est good inten­tion” they say..

    We salute U…

    Keep the good work going.

    God bless.

12. Disaster Tourist says:
    

    January 21st, 2005 at 2:39 am (#)

    Cheez! I was there :-)

13. Satish Krishnamurthy says:
    

    January 28th, 2005 at 4:12 pm (#)

    SRF Poly­mers Lim­ited is the lead­ing Nylon fish net twine man­u­fac­turer in India hold­ing a highly respected posi­tion in the Indian Fish Net industry.

    As a socially con­scious orga­ni­za­tion and more­over an orga­ni­za­tion involved in sup­ply­ing fish­ing net mate­ri­als we have under­taken sev­eral relief activ­i­ties since the Tsunami struck India, in order to help the affected fam­i­lies to recover from this unfor­tu­nate disaster.

    We wish to extend our sup­port to the NGO’s aim­ing to pro­vide fish­ing nets to the fishermen.

    We are in a posi­tion to sup­ply the fish­ing nets required in var­i­ous areas in Tamil Nadu, Ker­ala and Andhra Pradesh. As the net require­ment of fish­er­men is highly com­plex and vary­ing across regions, we wish to offer our ser­vices in sup­ply­ing the right fish­ing nets and as the require­ment is unprece­dented use our rela­tion­ship with the many net man­u­fac­tur­ers in sourc­ing these nets.

    We offer our assis­tance to you in iden­ti­fy­ing the right nets for dif­fer­ent loca­tions in these regions, effec­tive sourc­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of fish­ing nets.

    Look­ing for­ward to your response.

    With regards,

    Satish Krish­na­murthy

    SRF Poly­mers Ltd

    Fish Net Business

    ‘TUFLON CENTRE’

    SIB, Amar Sin­dur, 43 Pan­theon Road

    Egmore, Chen­nai — 600008. India.

    Tel : +91 44 52028297 / 52016692 / 52016690

    Mobile : +91 94440 76012

    Fax : +91 44 5202 8997

    Email : sathishk@srf.com

14. test says:
    

    March 18th, 2005 at 12:52 pm (#)

    test­ing

15. J.P.G.Valan arasu says:
    

    January 17th, 2006 at 3:32 pm (#)

    Great job guys, keep doing . I am much inspired by ur work

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