The Hindu : Front Page : The tale of a camera and the tsunami

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 25, 2005

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Front Page

The tale of a camera and the tsunami

By Ramya Kannan
and D.P. Sharan

CHENNAI/RANCHI, JAN. 24. Rashmi Sinha lives inland, in Ranchi, Jharkhand. Yet, in her mind she believes that she is in some way responsible for the tsunami — that she might have actually caused it.

On the morning of December 26, Rashmi Sinha, first year student of Maths Honours, Gosner College, Ranchi and baseball player, was busy doing the regular tourist thing — sinking her feet into the sands of the Marina in Chennai, clicking pictures, buying bric-a-brac from the vendors on the beach.

More precisely, buying a conch on the seashore. "I blew through the conch for the first time. Immediately after, the waves hit the beach, as if I had provoked the sea. It was the most frightening moment of my life," Rashmi says.

As the deep, resonant notes emerged from the conch, it seemed to bring with it the waves. All of a sudden, Rashmi found herself being swept up by the waves that were rushing at her with tremendous force. She and her mates from Ranchi University's baseball and cricket teams were on the beach, taking in the sights before returning to Jharkhand. Having wound up in the quarterfinals, it was time to go home, but some of the team members decided to visit the beach before taking the train.

A photograph captured by Rashmi's camera, minutes before the tsunami hit the Marina in Chennai. This picture, developed and printed from film from the camera retrieved from the beach later, carries tell-tale marks of December 26.

Some of them, including Rashmi, managed to hold on to trees. Tragically, two of the young women , Mamta and Sagarika, were swept away, only to be washed ashore dead. Rashmi says she held on to the branch of a tree and pulled herself up to keep her head above the water, until it receded. She also sustained a deep wound in her right leg as she tried to run away from the tide: from the sea she had so desperately wanted to see and the conch she had eagerly bought.

Rashmi talks slowly but in sudden bursts of spirit. She recollects the rather confused sequence of events on December 26. She thinks that Mamta and Sagarika first sounded the alarm about the surging sea. "They were far ahead of us and were shouting out to us to move fast." After that, of course, it was all a blur. "They were not fortunate enough to escape the tide."

Rashmi's camera, a Hotshot 35 JR, which she abandoned on the beach while running for safety, told its own story. A friend of a Chennai-based lawyer, Siva Raajashekaran, found it lying half buried in the sands of the Marina, near the MGR Memorial, and retrieved it. The lawyer brought it over to The Hindu asking for help in returning it to its owner or the owner's family.

The first clue emerged as the film in the camera was developed. It showed pictures of a women's sports team — at a stadium, in a room, on the beach. The yellow jerseys the young women were wearing made it an easy task to trace them. A sports reporter in The Hindu immediately identified the women as belonging to Jharkhand's baseball and cricket teams; they had been in Chennai around the time of the tsunami, to play in the inter-university tournaments.

The next step was to take the thread up from Jharkhand. With the cooperation of Beela Rajesh, Deputy Commissioner, Dhanbad district, links were established with Jaikumar Sinha, a representative of Ranchi University's sports department. He sent his staff to the houses of every member of the cricket and baseball teams to find out to whom the camera belonged.

The search went on until they found Rashmi. She was astonished that her camera had been recovered, that it had been traced to her, that it would be sent to her with the negatives and prints. The camera itself was probably insignificant but the photographs would be precious. The camera with the images it captured on the fateful day have been couriered to Rashmi. Perhaps there will be something in those pictures that will convince her that she did not, after all, summon the tsunami when she blew the conch.

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