After the tsunami

Alappad, a quiet sleepy hamlet in the southern Indian state of Kerala, situated between the Arabian sea and the backwaters, made headlines on 26 December 2004 when the killer tsunami waves generated by an earthquake below the ocean floor off the coast of Indonesia struck the region. In the blink of an eye 131 people had lost their lives, and over 2995 homes out of a total of 5967 had been washed away in this secluded hamlet, which has a population of 24,931.

Over a year and a half later, a teacher from the University of Southern California realised the need to revisit to see how the lives of the survivors of the tsunami were being shaped after this disastrous event. This study was her idea, and we were introduced to it as students of the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies, a collaborator of the study. The objective was to see the long term psychological and economic effects of the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami in Alappad and Pondicherry in India and one location in Sri Lanka. The part of the study at Alappad was done in the fishing community, which had been ravaged by the effects of tsunami.

The backwaters of Kerala, known worldwide for their beauty and splendour, seemed ominously quiet and the sea unusually violent as we travelled towards our destination. Our bus came to a halt in front of a beautiful sculpture erected by a local artist in memory of the dead. It depicted a mother with her hands together praying to the sea god to be kind to her children, …