The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Ode to child victim

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 28, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Ode to child victim

R. Sujatha

A still from the film.

CHENNAI: Memories came flooding back as the screen came alive with the sound of waves. The fear and surprise frozen on the faces of people laid to eternal rest in the mortuary. The traumatised parents and relatives who kept visiting for a glimpse of loved ones. The men and women who wailed over a lost one and a lost future.

No actor can fully comprehend and emote the feelings of a father who, instead of lamenting his loss, pleads with officials for several hours to get back the body of his child and her cousin. Or the vulnerability of a family and friends who could not inform the mother of her daughter's death.

Alai Osai (Sound of Waves) is director M. S. Anand's ode to five-year-old Varshita, who was washed away by the tsunami on December 26, 2004.

Varshita was a family friend of the director. The 20-minute film revolves around a cluster of children who become friends for a few minutes on the beach on the day tragedy struck the Marina. Except for a five-year-old daughter of a fisherman, the rest, including the child's parents, are washed away. One of the dead is a child from a wealthy family who came for a walk with her father. Both are washed away, while the mother captures the entire event on her video camera.

Life goes on. The fisher folk child continues to build castles only for the waves, which orphaned her, to wash them away.

The bereaved mother comes to the beach to end her life but ends up adopting the child — the very girl who last saw her daughter.

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