The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : The old man and the sea

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Monday, Jan 03, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

The old man and the sea

By Ramya Kannan

CHENNAI, JAN. 2. "The sea, my friend, has deceived me." Ganapathy repeats this to himself, and to anyone who cares to listen. Sitting on the remains of an old and wrecked boat, looking wistfully at the sea, he shakes his head sadly from time to time.

He believes that the sea has disappointed him this time. For someone who has lived his life by the sea and the tide, Ganapathy is sore that he could not read the signs before the tsunami hit the coast. For two generations, he has lived with his family in the Nochikuppam slum, his hut a few metres away from where the waves stop, and as a fisherman, has learnt to read the sea. "Or so I thought. I could predict the mood of the sea, by merely looking at her. By the patterns of the tide, by the way the waves danced, I could tell how she was going to be that day. I should have been able to tell — with the tsunami. But she gave no signs, no warning," Ganapathy says. Other fishermen who pride themselves on their knowledge of the sea were also taken aback, and are yet to come to terms with the fact that they could not read the signs in advance.

"She would even tell me how to predict storms and rain, cyclones and high tides, where the best fishes would be. But last week, when it should have mattered most, she remained silent," the 80 plus fisherman complains. On December 26 morning, the only sign the fisherfolk had was that the sea had withdrawn "a little more than usual."

"I had just come out of my hut and remember telling myself that the sea seemed so far away. As I kept watching, the waves came rushing with force, I knew, immediately, that something was wrong. Everybody was running away from the shore and I ran too," says Rani, who also lives in Nochikuppam.

"Sea was everywhere"

Having lived all her life by the sea, first in Vedaranyam and then in Thideer Nagar, M. Jothi cannot remember a day when the sea had been "this angry." "I have seen a lot of storms and cyclones, but nothing like what happened on Sunday. The sea was everywhere suddenly and without warning. All we could do was to run," she recounts with a shudder. Her grandchild nestling against her shoulder, wakes up with a whimper, "Look at this little one. The sea was his playmate, literally. And on Sunday, she nearly gobbled him up," Jothi says, bursting into tears. "I could even tell how the weather would be, based on what the sea told me. If she was blue, then she was happy and it would be a good day for us, if she was grey, she was glum and we'd have to watch out. Of course, fishermen have died in the seas, but it was not for lack of a warning from her," Ganapathy says. "This time, nothing... She has let me down..." he says, jumping off his perch on to the dirty sands, ambling away, muttering to himself, shaking his fist at the skies.

It does not matter so much to Ganapathy that he might have been unable to save the multitudes who who fell victim to the tsunami even if there had been adequate warning. What matters is that sea did not tell him her fearful secret this time.

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