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Friday, Feb 18, 2005

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National

Of lost lives and saplings

By Ramya Kannan

Saplings at Akkaraipettai, Nagapattinam. — Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

CUDDALORE/NAGAPATTINAM, FEB 17. Thogai Mayilvasan of Seruthur village in Nagapattinam devotes time each day to water two saplings planted on the beach. A rather unusual task for a fisherman, he agrees. But these saplings are different: they are named after two children who died in the December 26 tsunami. "Madhavan, my son, and Sugeswari, my niece, who lived with us. If Madhavan were alive he would have gone on to finish his 10th," he sighs.

A coconut sapling might seem a poor replacement for a son. But for Mayilvasan, these are minor distinctions. To him, the sapling needs tender care, more than what he would have given his son.

In over 150 pits dug on the beach, coconut and casuarina saplings nestle, reassuringly healthy. Each pit has a modest plaque bearing in Tamil letters the name of every person of Seruthur taken by the sea. It is the village's memorial for its dead, whose bodies had to be buried hastily.

In Devanampattinam, Cuddalore, it was on the 16th day after the tsunami that they performed the rituals en masse. Led by the actor Vivek Oberoi and his team, they planted about 3,000 saplings along the shore, naming each after a dead relative. These will also form a vegetative barrier between land and sea.

The District Collector, J. Radhakrishan, says the idea was sown in Seruthur by a team headed by Supriya Sahu, an IAS officer. Other villages followed: Vizhunthamavadi, Keechankuppam, Pazhayur, Arcot Thurai. Some are maintained better than others, but these gardens, marked off on the beach, have become part of the local psyche.

In deserted Kizhamoovarkarai, near Sirkazhi, they have found simpler, perhaps traditional, ways to remember their dead. Instead of headstones beside graves, small thatched shelters, about a foot high and surrounded on three sides, relieve the bleak landscape. Inside these makeshift memorials, earthen pots filled with water and plates with morsels of food sit side by side, as if to propitiate the souls.

While permanent memorials have been suggested to ensure that the tsunami is not forgotten easily, such structures would need Government approval.

Meanwhile, bucket in hand, Mayilvasan and his neighbour Kulandaivel walk up to the garden, gently lift the nets that act as fences and pick their way through the neat rows of saplings. They sit in front of their little plants and "feed" them.

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