Naggapan wasn’t at his two-story home when the tidal waves smashed his village, Karikkattlu Kupppam. His wife, Laxmi was at home preparing the morning catch while their youngest son had sneaked out to play marbles with the village kids. He never returned.
Now, outside his tent by the roadside, a lost Naggapan questions more to himself, “Where was God when my helpless child drowned?”
“God loved your son so he took him to his home”, said one of the Tibetan volunteers doing relief work at the ‘Tsunami Emergency Relief’ and Naggapan managed a faint smile which quickly vanished into the lines on his face like the waves that touch the shores and recedes into the vastness of grim indifference.
The volunteer monks and youths from the Namgyal Monastery and the Tibetan Youth Congress have now been helping the villagers for the third consecutive day, from distributing edibles to toys, from erecting tents to sharing smiles.
On the second and the third day of the ‘Tsunami Emergency Relief’ the Tibetan volunteers took the brunt of the unrelenting sun and erected around 250 tents for the villagers, which will now be their homes for the coming summer and more. Distributing the better quality tents each to a family, the volunteers began amateurishly with the chores of preparing designs for the tents, then cutting the woods to size, then nailing the pickets into the slippery sand, then covering the heavy tents over the wooden frame and then doing the tight knots over and over again. Taking one tent at a time, although the 250 tents seemed a grueling enough job to put professionals to shame, at the end of the third day, the relief camp washed in green of the tent colour beamed the hard work put in by the volunteers. Sun burnt and drenched in sweat, the volunteers stood watching at settled families with sorely cut hands as a result of pulling the coarse ropes and bruised legs but with gratified hearts. Now, as the Tibetan monks and youths walk in the small lanes between the tents, mothers with folded hands invite us in for a fish curry and rice sambhar, the least they can offer for the roof over their heads.
The medical camp for the villagers has for the first three days provided free medication and medicines for over 300 villagers and the number of patients keep on swelling. Our doctor from Dharamsala, Mr. Nyima Tsering has been kept inundated with complaints ranging from stress related problems to pregnancy complications. The ‘Tsunami Emergency Relief’ was also able to save a life from imminent death when few of the volunteers found a boy lying unconscious on the nearby express highway after being hit by a runaway speeding car. Emergency medication was provided to stop the effusive bleeding from his head before an ambulance could arrive to take him to a hospital.
On the third day of the relief work, 5 kgs each of sugar were distributed to the families along with utensils and crockery items. The women folk of Karikkattlu Kuppam queued up to receive the additions to their unfurnished kitchens, squeezed up in one corner of their tents. For a very long time to come now, the utensils in which the families will cook their three meals and the plates which shall satisfy their fill of stomach will remain as servings of love and gratitude of the Tibetans for their hosts.
‘Tsunami Emergency Relief’ is a joint effort of the Namgyal Monastery and the Tibetan Youth Congress.
