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?

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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.