The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Drawing from tsunami experience

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 18, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Drawing from tsunami experience

Ramya Kannan

Children's paintings reveal a gamut of experience of the December 26 tragedy Children's paintings reveal a gamut of experience of the tragedy The proceeds from the sale of cards will go to the Parent-Teachers Association of 11 government and aided schools.

A PICTURE OF TRAGEDY: A painting by a 11-year old boy from Nagapattinam.

CHENNAI: : When counsellors gave 2,000 children of Nagapattinam sheets of white chart, crayons and paint boxes, they had no idea that four months later, these `works of art' would occupy a prominent position in bookstores all over the state.

Briefly that is the story of how the tools of psychological therapy became works of art. Post-tsunami, counsellors and psychiatrists landed in Nagapattinam to help children, who lost their parents, siblings, Relatives and property, and overcome the trauma caused by the huge waves on December 26, 2004.

They got children to draw and paint and watched the white charts fast filling up with colours.

The sheets contained mostly images of the sea, water rushing in, people floating along with boats when the waters came far ashore, a family celebrating the Pongal festival, a mass grave being dug. When the counsellors sat down to look at the paintings, they attributed a gamut of emotions to the children's expressions: fear; dread; anger; hopelessness; hope; loss and sadness; and confusion.

With other psychiatric rehabilitation techniques, most children came out of their depression. Their paintings, however, went further.

The district administration decided to make greeting cards out of these evocative pictures. "We took some of these pictures to Sri Lanka for a conference on tsunami. People there were impressed with the paintings,"the Collector, J. Radhakrishnan, said.

The District Supply and Marketing Society was charged with printing and marketing.

Fifty pictures were short-listed and 20 selected to make the cards, priced at Rs.10 apiece.

The tsunami card series was released by Carnatic vocalist Sudha Raghunathan at a function in Higginbothams bookstore here, on April 15.

The proceeds from the sale would go to the Parents' Teachers Association of 11 government and aided schools, where these children study, Dr. Radhakrishnan said.

The cards would soon line the racks of other bookstores too.

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