The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Stranded in Andaman... and praying

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 28, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Stranded in Andaman... and praying

By G. Arun Kumar

HYDERABAD, DEC. 27. The bells of the temple kept tolling feverishly in Port Blair on Monday morning as the tsunami-battered Andaman and Nicobar islands, awash in sheets of water, struggled to come to terms with the tragedy.

Several gathered outside the temple to pray for the dead. "I saw a boy with tear-streaked cheeks, fear writ large on his innocent face, at the temple. He had lost his mother," said R. Gopidass, a resident of Mahendra Hills here, stuck in the island.

Speaking to The Hindu over phone from Port Blair, Mr. Gopidass, who has gone on a business trip last Monday, said aftershocks continued to rattle the island. "At 3.30 a.m. today, there was a tremor. On Sunday morning when the quake struck, the hotel room where I am staying shook so much that I thought it would collapse any minute," he recalled.

Ferocious waves

The early morning silence was shattered by the killer tidal waves, which rose to a height of 18 to 20 feet. "Their ferocity has to be seen to be believed," he said. It was all bright lights and lush greenery on Saturday evening. By Sunday morning, the lights had gone out.

"I am too taken aback by the impact to recount what exactly hit the port. Though I felt nervous, I pulled through. I just kept praying," he said.

Unforgettable sight

"As the waves surged, I saw people running for cover. I saw a boy's body sticking out of a boat. This is one sight I will never forget," he said.

Uprooted trees and cable wires, up-ended fishing boats, merchant ships sucked into one another and flooded city streets - that's how Mr. Gopidass described the situation in the island. "Fifteen minutes is all it took to reduce Port Blair to heaps of debris," he recounted. "The situation is very grim in Car Nicobar Islands. Some areas have been totally wiped out," Mr. Gopidass added.

"I did not know what to do till I received a call from him this morning," a petrified Priya Gopidass, a former bank officer, said at her residence.

Mr. Gopidass is planning to take a flight back to Chennai. He said there were more than 2000 tourists desperate to get back to India.

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