The Tsunami Miracle

The Tsunami Miracle

- by Raakhee Suryaprakash

Christmas Eve, 2004 A fishing hamlet in the Roman Catholic belt in Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India. The woman's screams of labour broke the silence of that most holy twilight. The old woman outside the hovel by the sea shook her son awake from his drunken stupor. “Go and fetch the Mary, our family will finally have its heir.” The man stumbles to the huts beyond and returned with the midwife before falling back to sleep. The crone drags the midwife into the hut muttering, “There’ll be a gold ring for you after tonight’s work for that healthy grandson this Christmas you’ve been promising me ever since Miriam got pregnant.”

Sounds of a child first cry broke the silence of the early hours of Christmas. A weary looking Mary was stopped at the hovel’s doorstep by the crone. “Where is my grandson Mary?” The midwife looks away and replies, “You can keep the gold ring you promised thaayee you are going to need it. It's a girl. You'll have to slave your entire life to pay your granddaughter's dowry.” Baldly breaking the news the midwife walked away. The crone screams with rage before her comatose son. “I am ruined forever, first a drunk husband, then a drunk son and now that moodevi of a daughter-in-law has ruined us with a girl-child. What an ill omen to give birth to the bane of a family on Christmas. She will have to atone and kill that child if she wants to stay with our family. 1

Christmas Morning The old woman delivered her ultimatum to Miriam, just out of the difficult labour. “You or the child. You didn’t bring even us ten sovereigns of gold when you married my son and now you have brought the plague on us with that child.” The tired young woman replies after the hours of verbal abuse with a quiet request. “Let me go to church and I’ll do as you ask tomorrow, not on this holy day and only after praying for forgiveness.” “Do as you like but remember either choke the child with the rice grains or take her and get out of our sight.” At the evening Christmas mass at a nearby shrine Miriam prays hard to seek forgiveness for the unforgivable. O Lady of Mercy! Show me the way, I have nowhere to go and my child has not much of a future, I have no choice but her death will be for the best.

Boxing Day December 26, 2004 Mirium goes to the kitchen with her child with her mother-in-law following her. The rice basket is empty. But the crone is persistent. “Leave the little plague in the basket. We’ll get the grains from our neighbour.” As they walk out of the hovel they see the sea has receded and the treasures of the Ocean lay exposed, a rich picking. The greedy crone runs to collect the oyster-like shells but just as she picks it, she sees a huge wave rise before her…

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Five minutes and there is but flotsam left in what was a thriving fishing village. No sign of the huts or the multitudes of sinners lining the unforgiving ocean, their sole source of livelihood and now their nemesis.

Hours later a motley crew of exhausted officials, a few nuns, and some able-bodied men to do rescue arrived to find no bodies to reclaim. After a fruitless hour a frail cry quickens the men’s search. Pushing aside what was left of a thatched roof the men find a child wet but alive in a grain-basket. The sole survivor of the tsunami—a newborn!

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