28^thDecember,2004

Today I was to go to the southwest part of the town, one of the worst-hit areas. As fixed earlier, I and three other volunteers were picked up by the rescue party van at six a.m. in the morning. A clean one hour journey and another hour of walk brought us to the horrible sight of death, despair and the hope called life. Every place where a hut stood earlier, were some muddy aftereffect, the stench of rotten bodies pervaded the whole place, and amidst all this, a sudden meowing had our attention. Soon we realized, it was coming from behind a huge tree. I asked the others to wait and worked my way to the back of the tree only to see a baby, alive and kicking, on a piece of clothing, nearly damp. Spellbound, I could only gesture the others to follow and they were equally dumbstruck. We could not imagine how a baby could survive a tsunami when its mother emerged and said she gave birth to her baby daughter on 26^th December night, on that very tree. The mother was nearly unable to move since she had eaten nearly nothing for over two days and was feeding the baby who was equally weak. We all thanked God and started on with our duties. The mother later told us, she named her baby “Tsunami”.