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| Monday, 3 January 2005 |
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No Galle Road to take me home by Aditha Dissanayake I am writing from Galle, having travelled here through Matugama, Elpitiya and Baddegama and, for the first time in my life, not on the Galle Road, because there is no Galle Road anymore, to take me home, (and no home either because there is only a heap of rubble where my grandmother's house used to be). The first significant sound that had assailed my ears at the entrance of the church of St. Aloysius' College where there are around five hundred refugees, including Buddhist monks and Poosaris, was the wail of a mother "Apo makkai une...mage puthala..." she laments in the southern dialect slapping her chest with her hands and refusing to believe that her two sons, who had gone for their swimming lessons to the beach on Sunday have now passed out of reach of her gentle hands, over to the hands of god. A fifty-year-old man says in a voice totally devoid of emotion, "I came with my daughter who had got selected to the Karapitiya Medical Faculty to find a boarding place to stay. When the water came I grabbed her hand, but my grasp wasn't strong enough, her hand slipped from mine and she disappeared". The look on his face is indescribable. But there are no tears in his eyes. His sorrow is too deep for tears. But the next person I meet is seething with anger. "What were the xxxx (a strong expletive) at the Met doing when the first earthquake occurred in Sumatra two hours before it struck us? There was enough time to warn us. I say, the Met is to blame for all this". "One minute I was seated at my desk making a phone call. The next minute there was water all around me," says a businessman whose shop was in Kaluwella. "My car which was parked outside came floating towards me. I got onto its roof and stayed there till the water subsided, continuously swallowing and vomiting the water". "I was still in bed after a crazy night celebrating Christmas with my friends," recalls a twenty-two-years working in a private bank. "When all of a sudden I heard a loud crash. I saw water outside the window. I ran out of the house. Last night I couldn't sleep a wink. The moment I closed my eyes I hear the sound of the waves in my ears". "Dooooooong" is the word a retired teacher of St. Aloysius' College who lives in Mahamodara uses to describe the sound of the second wave. "Even after I heard the sound I just stood in the middle of the sitting room not knowing what to do. I was the only one at home at the time. All my children had gone to Colombo to celebrate Christmas. Lucky for me, one of the young men in the area, an ex-student of mine came rushing into the house and dragged me by the hand. We ran towards high grounds. Seconds after we left the house the second wave came and now there is nothing left except for the two side walls of the living room." "I was hanging clothes on the clothes-line" explains the wife of retired bank manager over the phone from Rumassala. "I glanced towards the sea and saw the wave. I shouted to my husband and children. We ran towards the Rumassala hill and were half way up, when the water came surging towards us. We watched our house go under water and our car being swept into a ditch near the Matara road." They are still marooned on top of the hill, living with acquaintances who had given them shelter. Access is impossible because the bridge at Megalle had collapsed. A young doctor at the Karapitiya hospital covers his face with his hands and stays like that seemingly forever. Then he speaks in a voice shaking with shock. "I have never seen so many patients in my life. There was one young woman who had just delivered her baby at the Mahamodara hospital when the waves came. They brought her to Karapitiya and she kept asking for the baby she had just given birth to. I searched all over, but couldn't find a new born baby among the casualties....." Outside the Karapitiya hospital, people rush around, forgetting where they are going, almost getting run-over, with a dazed look on their faces. A group of tourists passes me in a pick-up, on their way to Colombo. A teenager in the pick-up with hair the colour of beer and a ring glistening in his ear, grins when he sees me staring and gives me the thumbs up sign as if to say "I'm alive. So all is well". I grin back and bring my palms together to wish him 'Ayubowan'. Positive spirited people like him, deserve long life. The sea is comparatively calm now. It's impossible to imagine only a few hours ago it had roared like a dragon and caused such devastation. Is this Nature taking revenge for the cruel way man treats her, day in and day out? Seeing the corpses transferred in pick-ups to the Karapitiya hospital, hearing the wails of the relatives of the deceased, looking at the empty spaces where once stood the Galle town, it is hard to believe there is a silver lining behind every cloud. Sunday December 26, 2004 surely proved the adage wrong. |
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