with some kids at the fishing village in Nagapattinam, India.
I do not know how to speak Tamil, the language spoken in the fishing village we visited in Nagapattiman, India but I discovered that I knew one language that these kids know by heart – smile.
Nagapattinam lies on the shores of the Bay of Bengal. They were among the hardest hit in the 2004 Tsunami. To date, the rehabilitation is still going on, but as I walked and tried to talk to villagers about their experiences, everyone still remembers it as if it happened yesterday.
Mothers talked on how they held on to their daughters hair just to keep her from being swept away.
a mother pointing to where she held on to her daughter's hair as the waters threatened to drift her away
We heard of stories about mothers who had to choose which child to save and to let go. One of those stories is about one mother named Priya.
During the tsunami, Priya held on to her two kids, a boy and a girl. They were being swept by the tsunami and the mom held on to her kids tightly. Priya held on to a tree. On her left was her son, her daughter on her right and she in the middle facing the tree. The waters were too powerful for her that she had to choose to let go of one child to be able to save the other and herself.
What is a mother supposed to do? How can she choose which child dies and which one survives? In the end, the waters won and she had to let go of her son.
Until now the memory haunts her and forgetting is impossible.
looking at the sun shine after the storm
But one cannot fathom the resilience of the human spirit the kids remember the tsunami, but they can smile amidst all bad memories.
May I be like them, a person who can smile even if things do not go as planned.
