“I dreamt of a tsunami washing away our relief tent”, said Paljor, a young monk from Namgyal Monastery at the breakfast table. And it is not much of a surprise that such recurring dreams should haunt anyone after spending almost two weeks in the tsunami torn southern coast lines of India, being a witness to the rampant destruction and devastation it has havocked.
For the past two days the monks from Namgyal Monastery and the Tibetan Youth Congress volunteers from RTYC Chandigarh and Herbertpur have been scanning the coastlines marred with the vicious scars of the tidal waves, providing immediate relief and succor.
Each displaced village that the Tibetan volunteers visited, each family that they met and each people that they talked with had a lugubrious story to tell of their own, a horrifying tales that shall pass down to posterities to come.
In Semancherry, a small village of fishermen community that the ‘Tsunami Emergency Relief’ was able to provide relief to, an old woman handed over to one of the Tibetan volunteers, a girl child barely 3 years of age. “The tsunami took away her mother and since then she has become listless. She hasn’t cried or laughed since then”, the old woman said. The crimes of fate and the helplessness of times had blown like the wind from the sea through the narrow lanes of the village, plucking a fresh bud off her branch.
On the dusty lanes of Pudhu Pattinam village, the volunteers confronted a woman lying down on the bare ground in the scorching sun. After the tsunami took away her entire family, she lost her mental balance, said the village sarpanch.
The litany of woes and loss continues to deepen and darken with each new village that the monks from Namgyal monastery and Tibetan youths from the Tibetan Youth Congress provided relief to, diluted perhaps by their love and help.
In the last two days, the Tsunami emergency relief has traveled over 600 kms down south from the base camp at Karikkattlu Kuppam village, reached over 10 displaced villages, provided relief to over 1200 families and touched the hearts of over 10,000 people.
But the tragedy of the fact remains that there are still thousands of villages unpenetrated, thousands of families not reached, tens of thousand of people still suffering and thousands of sorties still unheard.
The Tsunami Emergency Relief is a joint effort of the Namgyal Monastery and the Tibetan Youth Congress.
