Hope still lives on, in survivor

Chennai: V. Shanmugavelu of Kanathur, down East Coast Road in south Chennai, exudes hope that at least by this ninth anniversary of the tsunami disaster that almost buried him alive in his fishing village, the government will grant him a house and some livelihood facility promised long ago.

“Chief Minister Amma had graciously promised help when she visited my ward in the (Rajiv Gandhi) GH. Since then, I have been living in hope and knocking on one door after another. I am sure that if Amma knows my plight, she will help me now,” said the 44-year-old fisherman who was dug out from the sand and tsunami debris on the morning of that horrid Boxer’s Day deluge in December 2004.

Only his hand was jutting out of the sand when rescuers rushed to the beach at Kanathur. They pulled him out and initially laid him in the row of the dead before one of them saw him breathing and called the ambulance.

Multiple surgeries that involved discarding a good portion of the intestines - since they were filled with sand-debris - gave Shanmugavelu life, but his livelihood was gone as the doctors forbade him from hard work.

“I used to earn a fairly comfortable living as a help-hand in fishing boats. I became jobless after the surgery. A fisherman’s leader gives me food and space to sleep, while my wife lives with her parents along with our two daughters and a son,” Shanmugavelu told Deccan Chronicle while recounting his misery.

“I have no count of the number of times I have met various officials, from the Kancheepuram collector downwards, pleading for the promised plot and livelihood. They keep repeating the same promise, ‘Wait and you will get it’. How long do I wait?

An officer recently told me that all the tsunami funds have been exhausted. Unable to bear the pangs of poverty, my wife even attempted suicide along with our children.
Luckily, the neighbours saved them,” said the fisherman, who still visits hospitals whenever his abdominal pain becomes unbearable.