When the Sea Swallowed a City Whole

Soysauce if ur still following this - the Shrub got his nose rubbed into the ground - the parallel group that Inja was a part of has been dissolved! Yoohoo!

Ref Asli-Masanamuthu#33

[#31 Harimau,
Thanks for a useful post.]

ALL my posts are useful. I am still wondering what your position on Silappathikaram is. Is it a casteist poem to be banned forever? What would be your reaction if I wrote a mythical story and exempted brahmins from retribution on the basis of their birth? Since Kannagi mentions chaste women as a separate category, are we to assume that unchaste women were sufficiently commonplace in Sangam days despite all the crap one hears about ``karpu``? Come on, here is an area ripe for research though I wonder if any of the findings would be politically palatable.

[Are people returning to the beach?]

The Marina is being cleaned but people seem to have stayed on the paved sidewalk of the road skirting the beach (Beach Road, now renamed Kamarajar Salai). The fishermen of Elliott`s Beach have been provided temporary shelter at the Olcott Memorial High School grounds. What will happen to them when school reopens in a few days after the Christmas/New Year break? Last Sunday the police prevented people from going to the sea at Elliott`s Beach and people had to content themselves with staying on the road and looking at the sea from a couple of hundred meters away.

[There are photos from Madras on Samankumar.com. If you have pictures, please post them on Chowk.]

Please look at any of the daily paper`s websites for photos. Try www.dinamalar.com and I am sure you can also find webpages for Dinamani, Dina Thanthi, Malai Murasu, Malai Malar, etc. The vernacular papers have much better photo coverage than The Hindu. There was no point in going anywhere if I was not going to be allowed near the affected areas. Anyway, I personally find it morbid to intrude on other people`s grief.

Also, the waves probably rose less than 5 feet in Chennai. The real tragedy has been in Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur and Kanyakumari districts. When you see the ferries used to transport people (we are talking of vessels capable of carrying a hundred people each at least) to the offshore rock islands in Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin) sitting on the rocks in the mainland, one can imagine the amount of water that came in. Similarly in Nagapattinam, a motorized fishing boat was found a quarter of a mile inland sitting on top of a bridge. It is estimated that the waves rose at least 25 feet in Nagapattinam. At that height, I would have been seeking shelter on the flat roof of our house. Any higher and it would have been bye-bye!

For some reason, the Marina and localities immediately south of it such as San Thome and Foreshore Estates were greatly affected. The Adyar river to the south of Foreshore Estates probably provided a large escape valve for waves and spared the areas immediately to its south except for the fishermen`s slum on Elliott`s Beach. No damage in Tiruvanmiyur or farther south. One had to go to Mahabalipuram (50 miles south) to see water coming ashore in large quantities. When the sea retreated in Mahabalipuram, the submerged rock temples were visible for a while till the sea returned. South of Mahabalipuram, the waves seemed to have increased in size and ferocity and hence the reports of destruction and damage starting with Pondicherry.

soysauce #32
You will like this story:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/01/02/india.hero.dog.ap/index.html

In Kerala, an Amritamayi supporter who was online alerted the Ashram and saved a lot of people. In Thailand, an English school girl who had learned about tsunamis and recognised what the withdrawing of the sea meant alerted a whole hotel full of people and saved lives.

Many people who had only a few minutes warning were able to save themselves.

Having an emergency alarm system is not one of prohibitive scale or money. If we can have microwave towers crisscrossing the country as backup communications links, if we can launch a probe to the moon as we plan to, we can certainly have (for instance) a network of alarm sirens on the east coast, a mechanism for sounding alarms and increased awareness among the coastal population/administration.

It is a question of wanting to do so and finding ways, not a question of money or feasibility. If it gets used only 50 years from now, so what. Given that on both coasts and in A&N so many people have been severely affected in so many ways, starting on something now to reduce grief and loss a few decades from now, only constitutes good long-term planning.

#18 nb, point taken.

#19 sadna,
I am not opposed to any measures that could be undertaken to minimize death and destruction. I am only questioning their effectiveness. Re: cyclones, they always are preceded by rain and there is plenty of warning - typically a day or two. Warnings can be broadcast over radio & TV. Preparing for tidal waves which could strike within and hour or two would require installing a real time warning system along the entire coast most of which is inhabited. It`s a different system altogether, would require too much money to install and maintain and would require training people in this new warning system. I don`t think it can piggyback on the existing warning system. Simply broadcasting warning could work except it could have the opposite effect of sending people towards the sea trying to get to their children, family or friends. It seems like a tough problem to address in a poor country.

Thanks for digging up the info on early malayalam. As far as I know maNipravaLam is an admixture of tamil & samskrit and was widely in use among the vaishnavaites (Iyengars) of TN. Maybe this definition is peculiar to TN since your source says it`s a mixture of malayalam & samskrit.

DrDr, see my post below to sadna.
I don`t think your example works because earthquakes as such are quite common where you live and the preparation for them is the same regardless of their magnitude. You don`t prepare for tornadoes, do you?
I`d be interested in hearing more about your experiences with volunteering. Sanitation & clean water always are a problem in india. It gets worse in the rainy season.
Looking at the pictures, I don`t know which is worse - losing your life or surviving to find out that your children are all dead. This is truly heart breaking.

#31 Harimau,
Thanks for a useful post. Are people returning to the beach? There are photos from Madras on Samankumar.com. If you have pictures, please post them on Chowk.

Living in Chennai at present, I have a few first-hand impressions of what happened a week ago.

On Dec 26, I was sitting in front of the computer at around 6:30 am and idly going through various e-mails. Suddenly I felt that I was mildly swaying from the waist and above. The first thing that popped into my mind was that I must have a medical problem if while sitting down I was experiencing an uncontrollable swaying. A few minutes later I had the same sensation. I looked in to the cup of tea which I had in my hand by this time, and to be sure, the tea was swirling around too. I felt that a similar sensation a third time would certainly warrant a visit to the doctor.

Sometime later, somebody came down from the upper floor and asked if anybody felt the earth shaking. It then occurred to me that there was nothing medically wrong with me and that it must have been the tremors that made me sway. Avoiding doctors being one of my major objectives in life, I felt good, not knowing the amount of destruction that has been visited upon the earth.

Soon after, we heard sirens as police vehicles sped by our house toward the beach. Around 9:30, our maid came to report that the fishermen`s slum located in Elliott`s Beach in Besant Nagar has been washed away to sea. She mentioned something about huge waves from the sea doing the damage. At 10, I got into a car with my nephew and my mom to see what was going on. As we reached the beach, all approach roads had been blockaded by the police who were manning the intersections and preventing vehicles from entering the area. There were a lot of people milling around. We drove on until we found one road leading to the beach that was not blockaded and drove toward the sea. All the while, I was mentioning that what we were doing was stupid as nobody can outrun a tsunami even in a car.

We inched forward toward the beach when we espied a girl we knew. I got out of the car to ask her what was happening. She said that the sea had come up to the road skirting the beach. As I got back into the car, the panic-stricken crowd started running away from the beach yelling that a wave was coming. We managed to turn the car into a side street and went to the street where my sister lives to take her away from the area. My nephew and I then walked toward the beach and found that the sea had once come almost up to the road but had retreated since then though it was still at least a hundred feet farther inland than normal. The waves were not very high but were crashing more furiously. It was reported that the sea had invaded and retreated three times so far that morning.

Having evacuated my sister from her house, we sent the car off to retrieve a niece and her family who live also close to the sea farther south. I turned on the TV to hear reports of deaths totaling 100 in Chennai (just a couple of miles north of where we live) and preliminary death tolls of a few hundreds in Cuddalore, Nagapattinam and other coastal towns.

As the day wore on, the reports got grimmer. Yet life seemed normal where we lived just a couple of kilometers from the sea. It took a couple of days before the full extent of the disaster could be truly understood from TV coverage and newspaper reports. The death toll everywhere increased as more bodies were discovered or as more people were reported missing.

The approached to the beach remained blockaded for the next several days. Policemen were standing 30 feet apart along the entire length of the beach to prevent curiosity-seeking people from getting close to the sea.

On Thursday, there were reports of another tidal wave. I just walked over to the Adyar river to see the effect. The tide was rushing in with greater than normal speed but there was no tsunami. However, the river that had been dredged just a few months earlier at great cost had had thousands of tons of silt dumped back into it by the tides of the previous few days.

The government made arrangements to feed the affected people but it seemed that after the first few days people were refusing the bread that was being given out. A nephew who was part of a team of young people organizing relief work for the fishermen was annoyed that once the fishermen saw that different kinds of food were coming in, they decided to wait to see if something tastier could be got. “What am I doing, running a buffet?” he fumed. There were reports that the number of dead in some places was greater than the actual by as much as 50% as the local thugs figured out that this would be a good way to collect compensation from the government which had announced a cash award of Rs. 100,000 to each affected family. There were reports of relief supplies being looted by heartless rowdies.

PS. The tsunami hit us personally when one of our drivers reported tearfully that 4 of his family members out of a total of 11 who had gone on a trip to Velankanni near Nagapattinam are missing. There is still no word of what happened to them. He has filed a request to trace them with the local tahsildar, police station, etc., supplying them with photos and other identifications. He is now leaving for Velankanni himself to see what information he could get first-hand.

Relief & rehabilitation isnt trivial. Its not a matter of puttin ppl in camps & feeding them & then letting them go. More & more it looks like India was wrong 2 refuse any form of aid. India was also wrong 2 help the Shrub subvert the UN.
Ive taken part in disaster relief in central america. The single most challenge is sanitation. When uve got a 100 ppl crowded in a camp it gets filthy pretty soon & wevent got a good way of dealing w/ it.

HaramiU- ur potty mouth cud use some sanitation too.

Yo Asli-Masanamuthu,

We all know that while you might be named Tamil Mani (jewel) or some such thing, you really don’t have a clue about Silappathikaram or any Tamil epic for that matter. So I decided to pull out my trusty copy of the same and read the portion called “Vanchinamalai” which describes the events shortly after Kannagi proves that her husband was wrongly accused of theft and killed.

As Kannagi twists off her left breast and throws it, the God of Fire appears before her and asks whom of the inhabitants of Madurai he should spare from her wrath. Kannagi answers, “Paarppaar, Aravor, Pasu, Patthinip pendir, Mootthor, Kuzhavi enum ivaraik kaivittu theetthiratthar pakkame serga”. Which, since you don’t know Tamil, translates to “leave the Brahmins, good people, cows, chaste women, the elderly and the infants and destroy the evil persons”.

This, Masanamuthu, should cause serious issues for you. Here is your famous Tamil heroine Kannagi, to whom you guys have been raising statues, providing blanket exemption to Brahmins from her wrath. It is either that or your hero Ilango, who wrote the Silappathikaram, putting words into Kannagi’s mouth and providing blanket amnesty to Brahmins but not to the Masanamuthus. What are you going to do? Blame Kannagi or Ilango? Burn the Silappathikaram calling it a casteist poem? Don’t you think you need to discuss this matter at the next World Tamil Conference and take a decision consistent with Tamil Pride?

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Ref Digital Rectal Examination #23

[Haramiu -- chowk needs 2 open a kids section 4 retards like u. Take ur fights elsewhere. This is a serious topic.]

I suppose your writing style reflects your definition of adulthood.

More examples:

[#22 by DrDr

I like ur mentioning .... Lemme tell u that .... what 2 do .... It cud be..... . We know what 2 do. U might ..... We have been conditioned 2 an .... think abt it .....
All this is by way of saying, ur full of it when u talk abt how people cant b prepared for]

You are full of it.

Happy New Year... unless it is against your religion to celebrate New Year or Milad-i-Nabi or your birthday, etc. I really can`t remember and don`t care to remember such silly rules. So, if you can`t take a chill pill and hoist a cold brewsky once in a while, visit a real proctologist to get whatever it is that is bothering you out of your Butt.

re: history repeating itself?
Atlantis that is said to have been drowned to massive tidal waves about 11,000 years ago to Tsunamic waves. It is intriging that some archeologists are now saying that Indonesia was the place where Atlantis existed once! If so, this Tsumanic wave completes a cycle of destruction initiated many millenia ago.
http://www.atlan.org/faq/#1
(Atlantis was actually destroyed by the cataclysm we call the Flood. The Flood is not just a Biblical invention or copy, but a fact that is recorded in hundreds of mythologies, the world over, with a remarkable consistence. The Flood was indeed a giant tsunami (often improperly called a ``tidal wave``) caused by a very major submarine earthquake. The vestiges of the Flood are visible everywhere, but particulary over the North American continent, as the geologists are starting to realize.

This tsunami and other consequences of the cataclysm caused the death, sudden or not, of some 70% of the major species of great mammals that once roved the earth. The reality of the Flood was consensually accepted by the naturalists of the past century. But Darwin and Lyell introduced the concept of Uniformitarianism (negation of cataclysms), which became the present paradigm of geological science. However, the better paleontologists and geologists are fast returning towards the ancient view, which is not only Sacred History, but Reality itself, as we found out in our researches on the matter.)
Just wanted to share this interesting histo-mythological info.
Sridhar

sadna#19
``Its severity and expected path were known well in advance. One of the major reasons cited for such a high death toll was lack of proper evacuation, due to``

Soysauce, ok I see what you`re sayin. I like ur mentioning cultural memory. Lemme tell u that its been drilled into our heads since childhood what 2 do when The Big One comes. It cud be tomorrow or a 100 yrs from now - doesnt matter. We know what 2 do. U might say then our cultural memory has been altered & a big earthquake is never out of our consciousness. It doesnt mean we walk around fearing the worst but we have planned our lives around it in a sensible way. We keep a barrell of emergency supplies just in case & keep it fresh. We have been conditioned 2 an extent we dont even think abt it anymore. Yell earthquake at a school & watch the kids jump & hide under their desks.
All this is by way of saying, ur full of it when u talk abt how people cant b prepared for ``freakish events.`` :)

Haramiu -- chowk needs 2 open a kids section 4 retards like u. Take ur fights elsewhere. This is a serious topic.

Ref dost-mittar o#17

[harimou#8:

I think that you missed the point. If soysauce is a christian, he could not have benefitted from the reservation quotas.]

a) Just as the man who eats rice with Inji-kari-Kuzhambu (goat meat in ginger-curry sauce) calls himself Soysauce to make himself sound sophisticated, Love King has called himself John Simpson to make you think he is a Christian. On the board ``Caste and the City``, he claimed his parents are brahmins! So what does that make him? A brahmin who converted to Christianity?

b) In Tamil Nadu, the unofficial quota is extended to Christians and Muslims just to beat up on Pillais and brahmins. Just check the number of Christian or Muslim doctors in comparison to their proportion of the population.

c) Even today, no matter the Supreme Court has ruled that 50% is indeed the limit on reservations for BC/MBC/OBC/SC/ST/The Walking Brain-Dead, etc., medical admissions are manipulated in such a manner that cases regarding admissions before the courts are a routine annual occurrence. The only reason engineering education is no longer an issue is because there are 20,000 seats going a-begging in private engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu for the last couple of years.

Yo Asli-Masanamuthu,

So, did you watch the dance drama ``Silappathikaram`` presented by the Cleveland Cultural Alliance in North America between September and November 2004? I know it is not the same as the movie ``Baba`` (script supervisor: Doctor Artist Leader the Fund of Compassion). However, the person who wrote the lyrics for the dance-drama is none other than Kanimozhi (literally, ``Sweet Words``), the illegitimate daughter of Elder Son of Mother Tamil-Doctor Artist Leader the Fund of Compassion. That ought to rank it higher than the original epic written by Ilango and ``Sweet Words`` should now become the ``First Illegitimate Daughter of Mother Tamil`` or some such crap.

Soysauce, that`s why I said yet another, you will of course have noticed. I did notice Danielou.And of course, there is a long history of foreigners, and many missionaries in the last 300 years, being very proficient. Most Indians learn English in India at school. Most foreign scholars learn it for the first time at university.

soysauce #13

The east coast is hit often enough by cyclones and associated tidal surges to make regular evacuation and disaster drills worthwhile life-saving activities.

For example, the October 1999 Orissa `super` cyclone killed 9000-10000 people(at least count). Its severity and expected path was known well in advance. One of the major reasons cited for such a high death toll are lack of proper evacuation, due to

1) administrative incompetence and
2) resistance of vulnerable population to appeals to evacuate.


India already has a national policy on disaster management including cyclones :
http://www.ndmindia.nic.in/

which already talks of village/Panchayat-level drills and trainings :
http://www.ndmindia.nic.in/Mitigation/mitigationhome.html


IMO changes required to this policy after the tsunami disaster are
1) tsunamis have to be added to the list of potential disasters, and regions/ cities at risk identified, evacuation procedures listed

2) State governments and local administrations have to be forced to take disaster training more seriously than before. Perhaps benchmarks including disaster-mitigation benchmarks ought to be defined to hold institutions responsible.

3) Schools, colleges, health centers, government institutions and large employers have to be included as places where disaster training is mandated.

4) Building standards (for earthquakes and cyclones) are already part of the national disaster management policy, so now tidal wave-related building regulations have to be added/or made more stringent.

5)anything else


Re Tamil understood in Kerala in the 3rd century. Since you mentioned it I went looking again. It appears Tamil was the language of administration and scholarship in present-day Kerala and Malayalam was closely allied to Tamil until the post-Sangam era(9th century).

``The earliest written record of Malayalam is the /vazhappaLLi/ inscription (ca. 830 AD). The early literature of Malayalam comprised three types of composition:

Classical songs known as /pATTu/ of the Tamil tradition
/maNipravALam/ of the Sanskrit tradition, which permitted a generous interspersing of Sanskrit with Malayalam
The folk song rich in native elements``

``The oldest examples of /pattu/ and maniprvAlam respectively are /rAmacharitam/ and /vaishikatantram/, both of the twelveth century.

The earliest extant prose work in the language is a commentary in simple Malayalam Bhashakautaliyam (12th century) on Chanakya`s Arthasastra. Malayalam prose of different periods exibit degree of influence of different languages such as Tamil, Sanskrit, Prakrits, Pali, Hindi, Urdu, Arabi, Persian, Syriac, Portuguese, Dutch, French and English..``

harimou#8:

I think that you missed the point. If soysauce is a christian, he could not have benefitted from the reservation quotas.

Beautiful reminder. There is no doubt that Tamil more than fishermen had also been great sailers and spread their ethnic groups right upto the pacific. The epic may well be a historic truth that needs to be investigated and researched.

This also reminds me of the great civilisation of the Lost River in Pakistan and partly in India. In january, I would be making what would be the first foray into this inhospitable region of NARA and criss cross allover on foot and camels to see the area for myself. Sattelite pics indicate huge lagoons and legend has it that crocodiles live there. According to local folklore in some areas, camels and men just sink into the sand. Some say that an entire civilisation lies buried on the dunes.

So lets wait and see.

Cheerios

Hmmm. #14, I suppose is by DrDr since #13 is mine.
DrDr, there are two separate things - one is a warning system which is always good to have & the other is preparing people for disasters which is hard to do for freakish incidents. The point of the article is that the incident, which we grew up learning about, the destruction of Puhar, may have been due to a tidal wave. Doesn`t seem so extraordinary now, but it would have just a week ago.

nb: Alain Danielou, whose translation I have quoted from is a white man, fwiw. If indians can excel in english lit what`s such a big deal about foreigners becoming proficient in our languages?
Tamil has a history of foreigners - missionaries & such - learning the language and composing literary works so a foreigner commenting on Tamil literature would not be unusual.

#11 sadna
Alain Danielou says in his preface: ``...provides us with an astonishing amount of information about the civilization of the period -its arts, customs, religion, and philosophy - as well as a political map of Sount India and the names of a number of North Indian monarchs, which may, one day, permit us to date accurately the events it relates.``
He also speculates that the absence of any mention of the Pallava dynasty (credited with the erection of Mahabalipuram temples) implies a period before that, and somewhere around 200 CE.
The description of various musical and dance styles and of muscial instruments is very lucid and detailed, something we hated when made to learn by rote in high school, but have come to appreciate over time.
Ilango`s command of Tamil suggests that it was widely used in present-day Kerala. An obvious point perhaps.

Re - the other point, just as school kids in the West Coast do not have tornado drills, nor midwesterners have earthquake drills, it seems somewhat pointless to train people to deal with freakish events.

I can`t say I got the point of this article.
However if a disaster drill ain`t gonna cost much and COULD save a few lives its worth it dont` u think? What do u have 2 lose? India cud easily afford the 10, 20 million bucks?

John Simpson? I was mighty impressed at yet another white person who appeared to be an expert on ancient classical Indian literature!
Thanks for the facts, but it could have been made a little more interesting and less dry, given it is such a fascinating story. I hope you and yours were not affected by the tsunami.

soysauce #5
There are temple traditions in Kerala based on Kannagi where her tale is recited over 10 days during the yearly temple festival.

I went looking for more information online and came across these:
http://www.hssworld.org/homepage/html/boudhik/ekatmata_stotra/kannagi.html
and
http://www.geocities.com/promiserani2/co1100.html

`` The 3rd century author of the early Tamil epic Silappadigaaram (cilappadikAram), he was the son of a Chera King (in Kerala) and the youngest brother of King Cheran Chenguttuvan.

ILango is believed to have likely been a Jain (or perhaps a Buddhist), though the epic describes many features similar to those ascribed to the Hindu god Vishnu. He was also among those who challenged astrology and became a saint and monk. It is said that once when the king was traveling through the mountains, tribal girls told him of a mysterious woman who had recently come among them and who had soon after ascended to heaven. They said that this woman was missing her left breast, and that she was a goddess of chastity. The king assigned his brother, ILango, to collect the full story of the mysterious woman and write it as a book of verse. The story narrates the history of 3 kingdoms: Chera (western), Chola (eastern), and Pandian (in the middle of South India). Silapadikaram was written between 200 - 300 AD. The story of Jeweled Anklets, is rooted in the ordinary lives of the early Tamils of the Pandyan Kingdom.``


Also this:

``Vadavaraiyai mattaakki is a chapter from the Silappadikaaram made famous by MS Subbulakshmi.

Silappadikaaram is among the earliest works which describe the music and dance of India. From it, we gain knowledge of early ragas, concepts and terms used in music, and many folk songs. The work has 6 chapters on music: Arangetrukadai, Kanal Vari, Venirkadai, Vettuvavari, Kunrakuravai and Aychiyarkuravai. It refers to 11 folk dances: Kadayam, Ayirani, Marakkal, Kudai, Thudi, Alliyam, Mal, Kumbham, Pedu, Pavai, Pandarangam & Kotti.

Two commentaries on the Silappadikaram by Adiyarkkunallar and Arumpadavurai describe the music, dance, and literature contained in the book.``



Re sea flooding - Dwarka too was supposed to have been destroyed by an angry sea. There are remains of a submerged city(ies) discovered there too.

Re educating the general public about a once-in-a-century disaster - just like fire drills, disaster drills can also be held, at least in schools and colleges. It is also not very different from telling people to get their children immunized. It is a matter of wanting to.

Ref dost-mittar #6

[soysauce:
You have finally proven harimou wrong about you:) ]

The only reason any Masanamuthu would go to Nagapattinam would be to make a pilgrimage to nearby Tirukkuvalai, the birth-place of the Elder Son of Mother Tamil-Doctor Artist Leader the Fund of Compassion.

Asli-Masanamuthu, if you noticed, quoted a translation by Alain Danielou. Why couldn`t he translate the relevant portion himself? Because while the Masanamuthus talk a good game about the grandeur of Tamil, they haven`t got a clue how to read and understand ancient Tamil literature. Nor would they have a book on `Silappathikaram` in their houses.

Asli-Masanamuthus derive their knowledge of `Silappathikaram` or the City of Puhar from the cheap movie `Poompuhar`, scripted by Doctor Artist Leader the Fund of Compassion and starring ``Kazhagak kanmanikal`` (literally, ``the apple of the eye of the DMK`` -- this is how flunkies of the DMK are referred to, I kid you not!) SS Rajendran and his wife Vijayakumari, the Queen of Tear-Jerkers (and incidentally, the paramour of Doctor Artist Leader the Fund of Compassion).

Carnatic music composers Thyagaraja and Muthuswami Deekshitar have referred to legends of the sea attempting to invade the land in Nagapattinam in their songs written on the deities presiding over the famous temples in that town. Deekshitar in his song ``Soundara Rajam`` (Raga Brindavana Saranga -- ``Brindabani`` to you Northies) describes the Lord as ``ambudhi garva nigraham`` (quelling the arrogance of the ocean). Tyagaraja in his kriti ``Karmame Balavanda Maya`` (Raga Saveri) states ``Varidhi madi garvinci yeevasudhaku ta ranencaci ninnu`` (when the sea spurred by arrogance threatened to overwhelm the land, you humbled his onslaught). So there have been local legends, probably backed up by real incidents, about large sea waves trying to destroy the town.

PS. I, having gone to a Tamil-medium school and having chosen to read a second course in Tamil in place of Sanskrit, actually learnt about 200 lines of Silappathikaram`s ``Vazhakku Urai Kaathai`` (Canto on the Presentation of the Case to the King) and can still recall most of the lines. It opens with the King`s guard announcing the arrival of Kannagi:

``Vazhi! Em Chezhiya Vazhi! Thennava Vazhi!
Pazhiyodu patara Panchava Vazhi!...``

I just noticed how the words are liberally sprinkled with that sound loosely transcribed as ``zh``. As Asli-Masanamuthu once called it, it is is the Brahminometer... Asli-Masanamuthus can`t get that tongue-twister out of their mouths!

Ref dost-mittar #6

[soysauce:
You have finally proven harimou wrong about you:) ]

DM-ji, you might want to enlighten Asli-Masanamuthu about whether Madhavi (with the aspirated `dh`) is a Sanskrit name or not!

I also wonder why Kannagi was named ``Kannagi`` and not ``Senthamizh Selvi`` or ``Love Queen``!

Ref Asli-Masanamuthu #5

[John Simpson indeed! I have asked Chowk editors to credit me as the author.]

Your knowledge of English is rather limited. If you want to sex up your name, you could have tried John Sexton, sexton being a grave-digger and about as close to ``Masanamuthu`` (Smashaan-Moti) as you can get.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

soysauce:
A beautiful story. One wonders whose curse has caused the present catastrophe!

PS: You have finally proven harimou wrong about you:)

re: lost civilisations and Poompuhar
A common thread among ancient literature and epics is the deluge and lost cities or civilisations, even predating the destruction of Pompei. Grandeur of Poopmpuhar has not been forgotten even today. Graham Hancock in his fascinating book (he is a marine biologist who has explored the lost city of Poompuhar, Dwaraka etc) ``Underworld: the mysterious Origin of Civilizations`` has some interesting things to say.

``Looking for evidence of ancient cataclysmic floods, Underworld explores up-to-date geological and climatological research on what may have happened during the last 17,000 years. Central to Hancock`s investigation are inundation maps created by Dr. Glen Milne of Durham University which show vast tracts of mostly coastal land which were submerged by three waves of cataclysmic flooding between 17,000 and 8,000 years ago. The area of land -- the best quality habitable land of that time -- lost to the sea was huge: 5 percent of the earth`s surface or 25 million square kilometers. While such maps cannot be 100 percent accurate, Hancock believes they are accurate enough to support his theories.``

One can read about Poompuhar and the recent archeology in the following url:
http://www.grahamhancock.com/underworld
sridhar

John Simpson indeed! I have asked Chowk editors to credit me as the author.
#3 sadna
Up until now it has been speculated that the destruction of these ports/coastal areas occurred due to erosion or silting up. Makes sense since we didn`t know anything about tidal waves in the indian ocean. Now there`s reason to reassess.
According to the epic Manimekalai, Chola king was grieving over the loss of his son and failed to put up the celebration for Indra. Manimekalai the goddess got angry and destroyed Puhar as punishment. This suggests a certain suddenness, a catastrophe. As for the period of these epics, the evidence is highly circumstantial and based on a chain of reasoning. So&so mentioned in this book, therefore this precedes him, etc., with the time of so&so itself is lost in the mists of time. According to some authors, Ilango & Sattanar (author of Manimekalai) were contemporaries. But the fact that Puhar was a thriving city according to Ilango and past its prime according to Sattanar suggests a chronological order to some others.

#2 MBZI
I don`t think science is the solution for every disaster. Global warming can be slowed down by exercising caution not by new technology. At any rate, adaptation of new technology again comes down to human factors.
There`s quite a bit of talk about a warning system for future Tsunamis. Given that we have very little history or cultural memory of Tsunamis, I`d think this would not be a very effective idea. To give an extreme example, we could deploy the best technology to plan against an asteroid impact. But it would be ineffective since we have no experience & no training.
I am told that right after the first waves hit, huge crowd of gawkers and concerned folk gathered at the beaches in TN. Clearly this was because they had no clue what was going on. If a second wave had hit, they probably would have kept away but no such thing happened (fortunately) and the possibility of something like this remains theoretical. Should another tidal wave strike again, you can expect gawkers to get back there again. Disasters are prevented only if they occur with a certain frequency and people can be conditioned to react. I am not sure technology is going to help here.

#1 Veeresh
Nagappattinam continued to be a source of smuggled goods until into the 90s. Easing of import restrictions put an end to the smuggling activity. You could get gillette blades, japanese cassette tapes and chinese Hero pens from walking into any of the tea stalls.

`Silappadigaram` seems to date from 2-3rd century AD?

Mahabalipuram was apparently once a thriving port city too and there is a flood story in Mahabalipuram too. The Hindu reported that in fisherman fable, the Mahabalipuram Shore temple( dating from 7th century Pallava?) was said to have six counterparts which are submerged.

Recently, remains of structures stretching over a large area were discovered underwater about a kilometer offshore from the Shore temple. The submerging could have been caused by a local coastline/sea level change of course and not a catastrophic event.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Nagapattinam was my first Indian port as a cadet, way back in July 1975, onboard a cargo ship. Flew Bombay to Madras, metre gauge train from Egmore to Nagapattinam, and thence by rickshaw to the fishing jetty. Onwards by fishing boat to the anchorage and onboard the mv SATYA KAMAL, in with wheat from the US.

Spent a month there, and all I remember is working, slogging, as the juniormost cadet on board. However, we did manage to go out on the fishing boats a few times to the neighbouring towns of Karaikal and Velankani, if I remember the spellings correctly.

It was also the first port of call for the passenger ships on their way from Singapore and Kelang to Madras. There used to be a lot of private commerce (also called smuggling) going on. The onset of aviation, the evolution of Colombo as a trans-shipment port, and the growth of Tuticorin as well as Chennai put an end to those glory days.

Yes, there used to be a lot of very rich people in and around Nagapatinam in the `70s and `80s. Then it slowed down. And now, it is a coastal area, post tsunami waves.