The Weight of Water

This weekend, for the shooting of the Edward Sargent film, we went to several locations in southern Tamil Nadu.

One of the places we went to was the southernmost point of India, a town called Kanniyakumari, dedicated to the virgin goddess Kanya. Kanniyakumari is a small seaside resort that at first glance is nothing special. The special aspect of Kanniyakumari is that it is where the Indian Ocean, The Arabian Sea, and the Bay of Bengal converge. This makes for some fantastic breakers on the beach, but it also carries a heavy casualty toll.

In 2004, Kanniyakumari was devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami, which literally wiped out the small town as well as rendering the neighboring town of Nagercoil as a veritable ghost town for a while. Most people do not realize that southern India took such a beating with the tsunami because it was not a tourist destination for non-Indians, as was seen once again with a complete dearth of white people and/or any non-Indians.

When the tsunami did hit, there were several hundred pilgrims visiting one of the holy shrines who perished as well as a large number of the villagers in each coastal town in the tsunami’s range.

Apparently, what makes the situation even more tragic is that there was a gross miscommunication and lack of understanding about just what a tsunami was. When the news was spread that a “tsunami” was coming, because of a breach of communication, many of the locals thought that a great visitor was coming to the beach and they swarmed to greet him, many of them children. All perished.

Handel and his mother Caroline, the cameraman and director respectively, came down to Nagercoil and Kanniyakumari from Tirunelveli the day after it hit to take footage. Even within India, many people did not know about the extent of the damage as it did not make national, nor international news on the scale that places such as the tourist destinations in Thailand garnered. They sent their footage to the Prime Minister, who eventually sent down sufficient aid, three days after the ocean’s fury. I remember the Belgian and Italian press giving extensive coverage to those areas since there were Belgian and Italian tourists there, with nary a mention of India. Had my sister not been here just a week or so before the tsunami hit, I probably would have never known about it either.

Handel described the scene as a wasteland of carnage and the stench of dead bodies everywhere. A large section of a concrete bridge had been moved for several hundred meters intact, boats, homes, and trucks strewn like a child’s playthings. With their interviews of people, they heard stories of parents holding onto children, but who were not able to maintain a grip, losing them to the ocean’s indifference. The body count was so high that ultimately they just brought in bulldozers to make a mass grave. Thousands were lost and buried unceremoniously.

The power of the ocean is unfathomable. I went into the water at the beach where we were filming, as I am naturally drawn to water, but I was definitely made aware of the strength of this place, even at low tide. The breakers were easily ten feet on a calm day with currents pulling back out at an incredible force, that would knock you off your feet in a foot of water. I did not venture out to breakers, knowing that there was a strong riptide and undertow, but even the waves that broke on the beach were enough to knock you over and take you for a spin.

We then went to the rebuilt villag of Kanniyakumari later in the evening, the area was bustling with life. It was yet again an example of resiliency that does leave the mind boggled. On an small island off the coast, there is a larger shrine dedicated to Swami Vivekananda, who braved the surf to swim out to the small island to meditate on the death of his guru, as well as an enormous 130-foot statue of the Tamil poet Thiruvalluva. Apparently, the largest wave of the tsunami hit the shoulders of this statue, though it weathered the storm. Like their ideas and words, these shrines are able to withstand Time better than us mere mortal coils.

On the boardwalk, there were many vendors of shells, food, and trinkets. Except for a largely ignored, unlit monument to the tsunami (most likely avoided out of superstition), there was no real sign of the death and destruction from merely 7 years ago. However, looking out to the meeting of the three seas, I did pause to listen to the ocean’s crashing, thinking of the awesome power that is nature, and how, in our ridiculous moments of arrogance, that we, we humans actually convince ourselves of the delusion that we can control the awesome tide of Time and Nature.