Amritapuri, Kerlala, India. On the shores of the Arabian Sea
4,000 of us Westerners and Indians walk three kilometers in two single-file lines down the ocean road to the site of the mass cremation. It is the sixteenth and last day of the daily funeral rites after the tsunami. As we walk we chant a prayer for the peace and well-being of the world. At the beach, forty-two palm frond lean-tos cover the ashes where pyres burned. Amma leads the rites. Holding clay oil lamps in our palms, we circumambulate the funeral site, praying for the living and the dead all over the world.
Amma speaks to everyone: “We may claim that we are the ones who are doing everything, but before we could even blink our eyes, the waves came and destroyed everything…One thing we can do in this situation is to invoke love and compassion in our hearts. Pray with your hearts. Act with your hands. The dead are gone. To bring them back is impossible. Let us use this situation an opportunity to share peace and love with the living.”
Ankle-deep in water, we place lighted lamps onto lapping waves and watch the tide carry them away. One fisherman tells Amma he's become frightened of the water; she helps him gather courage by inspiring him to wade out chest-deep where he offers his lamp to the sea.
In the days and months to follow, beyond restoring lives through construction of new homes and boats, feeding thousands a day, replenishing necessities, offering medical aid, and providing vocational training, there was more. There was the rekindling of spirit.
Amma and several Westerners taught thousands of children to swim so they would not fear the water. Many women and children who died in the 2004 Asian tsunami had not known how to swim. The lessons took place in the swimming pool during several 3-day yoga camps held in the ashram. Children learned about their cultural heritage, Indian philosophy, how to cultivate optimistic thinking, and to practice yoga and meditation. They also enjoyed play-time, including how to make paper airplanes and then sending hundreds gliding from upper floors of the ashram.
To help children in the temporary shelters catch up with school work, the ashram arranged tutoring classes and provided school materials.
Over several years before the tsunami, quite a few villagers had abandoned their tradition of singing devotional songs at sunrise and sunset, in favor of watching TV. Most took up their spiritual practices again following the devastation. To help villagers revitalize their faith, a couple of ashram monks would ride bikes up and down the coast, stopping to give inspirational talks and lead the people in chanting.
Psychologists from Amma’s hospital in Cochin visited villages to offer music and art therapy, to help alleviate and heal post traumatic stress. Adult villagers composed hymns and lyrics, expressing their feelings and experiences. Children drew pictures of clinging to the tops of palm trees, floating under water, struggling in the wave, and of homes submerged with fish all around.
The children and adults were encouraged to talk about what happened. In addition, ashram residents visited temporary relief housing projects daily to play sports with children and to sing devotional songs with them. The community-style living and lighthearted activities that went on in and around the temporary shelters helped people heal emotionally and to remember what it was like to feel happy.
The ashram psychologists attributed the rapid emotional, psychological, and spiritual recovery to this re-creation of community and human connection that went on the shelters. These people who had lost everything, had the wealth of community.
Spiritual and psychological rehabilitation programs conducted by many organizations, took place all over tsunami-torn Asia.
In contrast to the above stories of tsunami relief, are these from Hurricane Katrina:
New Orleans, August 31, 2005. Excerpts from CNN.com
…three shootings, widespread looting and a number of attempted carjackings had been reported near the Louisiana Superdome, where more than 20,000 people were holed up in the city's shelter of last resort, where toilets were overflowing and there was no air conditioning to provide relief from 90-degree heat. Bathrooms had no lights, making people afraid to enter, and the stench from backed-up toilets inside killed any inclination toward bravery.
“When we have to go to the bathroom we just get a box. That’s all you can do now,” said Sandra Jones.
From the Associated Press, Sept 3, 2005
Evacuations of the last remaining refugees at the arena were halted before dawn Saturday …The Texas Air National Guard estimated that between 2,000 and 5,000 people remained at the Superdome on Saturday amid a frightening scene of filth, violence and despair.
The last 300 refugees in the Superdome climbed aboard buses Saturday bound for new temporary shelter, leaving behind a darkened and stinking arena strewn with up to five feet of trash.
The sight of the last person — an elderly man wearing a Houston Rockets cap — prompted cheers from members of the Texas National Guard who were guarding the facility. “I feel like I’ve been here 40 years,” said Louis Dalmas Sr., one of the last people out. “Any bus going anywhere — that’s all I want.”
Conclusion:
In this, the wealthiest nation in the world, we witnessed in New Orleans, man's capacity for inhumanity to man.
Our American leaders did not know how to organize a practical and dignified solution for the simple matter of food and shelter, nor how to inspire connection to root traditions and spirit in ways that would use the fertile ground of tragedy to raise the human spirit, to give hope for the future.
Featuring stories from the Asian tsunami and aftermath, the book will delve into ten phases of attending to life-altering events on physical, psychological, and spiritual levels.
Personal account and commentary will trace the inspired leadership of the Indian holy woman, Amma, her immediate actions at the onset of the tsunami: evacuation of 15,000 people, medical aid, providing shelter and food,consoling, mass cremation, clean-up, and later the rebuilding of homes and fishing boats, and the restoration of the human spirit.
The book will explore the ways calamity (or threat of it) can forever alter one's approach to life, with a look at the importance of local community and of self-inquery.
Stories and interviews expand on the various views of life and death, and life after death.
December 26, 2004. Amritapuri, Kerala, India.
A lone pole-driven canoe carrying a European couple on a pleasure ride, glides along the backwaters. Coconut palms line the banks; a white bird soars. On the opposite shore, my friend and I, and a handful of Sunday visitors, wait in the hot sun for the small motor ferry to carry us across to the ashram on the Arabian Sea. The pleasure canoe drifts alongside the ashram boat jetty and moors; the man helps the woman step out, and they stroll towards the ashram.
Seconds later, dark gray water surges through gullies, shoots into the backwaters, capsizing the pleasure canoe and dumping debris in its wake. A village fisherman shouts, waving his arms. Many who’d been waiting for the motor ferry run away. I’m transfixed. Where is all that water coming from and why? Then it dawns on me.
“Was that a tsunami?” I ask Indian man in his Sunday best.
He’s walking away, slowly, head down, looking pensive, he nods. “Yes.”
“We better get to high ground,” I say to him and my friend, “I think another wave is coming.” We head down the pathway to the ashram’s four-story computer school, five minutes away. A group of students saunter along in front of us. “We need to move quickly,” I say, all the while imagining giant waves from movies I’ve seen.
Meanwhile, on the peninsula across the backwaters, minutes from the ashram complex, the Arabian Sea waters have receded to about forty feet beyond the average tidal mark. Visitors, ashram residents, and villagers delight in the strange phenomena, the exposed expanse of beach.
A messenger comes running—“Quick. Get away. Run to the ashram. Go up to the second and third floors.” The ashram’s PA system blare, an announcement in eighteen languages for everyone to climb to the upper stories of the temple building or ashram flats, and for visitors to move the few cars parked by the ocean. 10,000 guests had gathered for a special Sunday program, and another 4,000 Indian and Western ashram residents had been engaged in their daily routines.
We wait for what becomes known as “the killer wave.”
