In the days after the 26 December tsunami swept up the Tamil Nadu coast, people united for the sheer common fortune of having survived. Shooing away the vultures, they came together to bury the dead in mass graves. No one bothered about the caste or religion of the bodies that lay on the beach. There was a groundswell movement by individuals and organisations carrying out rescue operations and fulfilling the most fundamental needs of the survivors.
On the first day, with the people scattered across different villages, the survivors were running about frantically seeking lost family members. The villagers opened their temples, marriage halls and theatres to the homeless, and had helped start communal kitchens by the next day.
By the second day, the survivors were able to concentrate their search for loved ones in the camps that had sprung up. Many student groups, ngos and others had moved into the ravaged areas, working to locate the missing, clearing the corpses, and providing much-needed medical support. Auto-rickshaws were commandeered to announce the names of stranded survivors. It took another couple of days for the communities and families to finally regroup. An approximate list of the dead was ready in a little over a week, the biggest problem being the identification of bodies that had been washed away from their home communities. In the end, such cases did not find registration on any list.
The immediate emotional catastrophe behind them, half a year later, the people of the Tamil Nadu coast are now confronted with the challenge of rebuilding their lives and livelihoods – how to settle down, where to settle down, and how to get back to the sea and off the dole. They want to take back control of their lives and emerge from their dependence. They want to rebuild their houses by the beach. But all this is easier said than done.