Remembering the Southeast Asian Tsunami, Part 2

At this point, no one around us had any idea that what we were seeing was the result of a tsunami.  All we knew was that the water level was rising rapidly, and the village was beginning to flood.

The Amritananda Mayi Math ashram and the surrounding community of Amritapuri is situated on a piece of land just across the backwaters from the village of Vallikavu.  On the other side, the western side, is the Arabian sea.  Amritapuri and Vallikavu lie in the Kollam district of the state of Kerala, along the Malabar Coast–that is, the southwest coast of India.

The primary force of the tsunami struck the southeast coast, hitting cities like Chennai, Madras, and Pondicherry particularly hard.  Later, I would remember that just as the wave was crashing on Chennai, Jason and I had been tracing a route on our maps that would have put us on the beach in that city, probably enjoying a beer under a coconut palm… and therefore dead.  The only difference was a few days of travel.  If we had left Amritapuri only a few days earlier, we would have been directly in the path of the wave that killed 230,000.

As it was, however, we were in Vallikavu, and surrounded by a scene of sheer chaos.  Our first instinct was to get back across the water to Amritapuri so that we could find out what was going on.  Jason’s father was over there, as was everyone else we knew.  No one on our side of the water spoke more than a few words of English.

When we got to the ferry, however, we were told that we could not go back across.  All the boats were being used to get everyone out of Amritapuri and over to Vallikavu.  Even a quick dash to get our things out of the ashram was out of the question.  Even the smallest boats were being used to rescue drowning fishermen from the swollen waters.

Gradually, some of the ashram residents began to appear on our side of the ferry.  We were told that everyone was being evacuated.  We were all to walk about three miles inland to the site of a new university, currently under construction, which would serve as a refugee camp of sorts.  As we waited by the ferry, I was fingering my mala and desperately reciting every mantra I had learned.  A chill came over me as I remembered where I had been that morning before dawn: prostrate in the Kali temple, praying for the dark goddess to strip away from my life everything that was not real.  “Be careful what you wish for,” something inside me said.

When everyone from the ashram was evacuated, we began our long walk out to the university campus.  Some of the monks and nuns stayed behind to help with rescue efforts.  As we walked away, I remember looking back and seeing Amma up to her waist in water, shouting orders and making sure that people got on boats.

When we arrived at the university campus, we found it was nothing more than a bare concrete structure: floors, walls, ceiling.  There were no amenities.  The monks and nuns from the ashram had managed to bring enough rice and drinking water to sustain us, at least for the time being.  We spread our things out on the floor.  When the flooding began, Jason and I were the only two ashram residents who were not actually in Amritapuri, but in Vallikavu–therefore we were also the only two who weren’t able to get our things from the ashram before hiking inland to make camp.  Woefully I thought of all my possessions left behind in our 14th-floor room at the ashram, and considered the few small things I had with me in my monk’s bag: my Lonely Planet guide, my journal, a travel alarm clock, pens, maybe a copy of the Sri Lalitha Sahasranam–the thousand names of the Goddess, which I had been rising at four each morning to chant.  My Keats, my vitamins and supplements, my toothbrush, and everything else was still in the ashram, and I had no idea whether I would ever see any of it again.

That night was one of the strangest of my life.

There was no bedding, and I was fully prepared to sleep on the hard, cold concrete with nothing but my monk’s bag for a pillow.  And then I was told that downstairs, there was a stash of thin (literally a few millimeters) sleeping mats, and that a couple of monks were handing them out.  I went downstairs and joined the throng that had gathered around the monks.  There were not enough mats for everyone.  I remember reaching in and trying to grab a mat from the stack, only to have it ripped from my hands by a middle-aged Indian man.  I remember shouting at him in anger and desperate frustration.  He just looked at me.  Finally I managed to get a mat.  As I walked back upstairs to the patch of concrete that Jason, his father, and I had staked out, I realized just what circumstances like this could do to people–could do to me.  At the ashram it was all serene smiles and “Om Namah Shivaya,” hugs and chai tea at sunrise.  It was as near to a real spiritual paradise as I had ever encountered.  But here, in the camp, I saw the dark and hungry animal that lurks inside each of us, and emerges from the shadows in desperate circumstances to do what must be done.

That night I didn’t sleep.  I lay on my thin mat on the cold concrete, my head resting on a bag full of books.  Every few minutes the sheer discomfort was such that I had to turn over on my other side.  And there were sounds: I could hear the Indian people, the ones who had to sleep on the roof because there was no more room inside, and the women were wailing.  A few of the village fishermen, I was told, who had been out at sea, were caught in the powerful currents and drowned.  A rumor spread in the night that a second wave might be coming, that Amma had said so.  For the people of Amritapuri and Vallikav, it was as though the world was ending.