Big brother turns Good Samaritan
Rukmani Rajagopal, a housewife from Kuchchaveli, wore her best saree to go to church that Boxing Day, December 26. When she stepped out of her house it was just past 9 a.m. There was commotion all round. She thought war had broken out between Government troops and Tiger guerrillas. It was only the near three-year ceasefire that had halted land mines and bombs from exploding in this fiery battle zone.

"I asked my daughter to find out what's going on. She came back shouting sea water is coming," Rukmani said. Just then she saw her son's fishing boat raised skywards by a giant tidal wave heading towards her. Her daughter dragged her to safety. That saved Rukmani's life but her son died.

Ten days later she walked into an Indian Navy medical camp with wounds still sore from her escape. She was also suffering from trauma. The camp is located in an altogether neglected Government hospital. The complex had been built years ago by an Italian organisation. Having received help, she did not walk out of this camp as a patient. She had become a part of the medical team.

The doctors found she had a good command of the English language. That was not her only qualification. Years ago, she had worked as a nurse in a private hospital in the neighbouring village of Veerancholai. Besides English, the Indian medics found she spoke another language they were familiar with - medical care.

Rukmani is now a common link between the villagers and the medical team. She translates to doctors what the patients say and vice versa. As a volunteer, she works late hours. The wife of a retired English teacher, Rukmani says she is thrilled. "I never thought I would ever re-live my role as a nurse. All what I learnt has come to life again," she adds.

The scenes of a parched village, once lush with greenery, men, women and children reflect misery in their faces. Dependent on fishing, nature's fury had left most of them with little or no means of livelihood. There are few if any visible signs of Government help - a marked contrast to what I saw in the South.

If that was painful enough, what a few well-wishers are distributing did not appear adequate. Four-wheel drive vehicles and private coaches lay parked at odd intervals along the dusty road. There are large queues outside to receive whatever was being doled out - food, medicine and clothes.

Even amidst the death and devastation caused by tsunamis, the horrors of a near two-decade-long separatist war are evident. As the Indian built Chetak multi role helicopter descends stirring clouds of red dust, the picture unfolds. Most of the ground surrounding the medical camp is laden with land mines. Indian teams in red shirts and caps are engaged in a cautious exercise of removing them.

I am in the company of Captain Muralidharan Nair, Commanding Officer of INS Jamuna. We walk through a corridor to the main road and then to the medical camp. There surgeons, psychiatrists and general duty officers are busy treating patients. The run down hospital building had been cleaned and sanitized. Beds had been placed inside. "The first few days we treated 300 patients a day. Now it is an average of 100 per day," says Squadron Commander R. Koshi. Most patients were children or pregnant mothers. Complaints included fever, skin ailments, minor injuries and trauma.

But there is a more noticeable feature that is drawing crowds - a highly successful exercise to win the hearts and minds of the public there. Seated on a table under a porch, technicians from INS Jamuna are busy repairing radios, TV sets, cassette recorders, electric irons and other appliances. In most cases, seawater and sand had made them malfunction. When spares are not available, owners are told to bring them. There are tears in the eyes of R. Muthuvel, when I ask why he was there. He wriggles his hands and points to a transistor radio. A technician is brushing away the sand that had entered. "I can now listen to songs and hear the news," he says.

A little distance away, under the shade of a mango tree whose leaves have turned red due to gushing sea water, another team is busy. They are repairing water pumps, electricity generators and outboard motors belonging to villagers. Testimony of the impact of their operation comes from Sri Lanka Navy's Contingency Commander for the area, Commander U.I. Serasinghe. "The villagers are very happy. Normalcy in their lives has come earlier than they hoped," he says.

I arrived in Trincomalee last Monday in the company of Lt. Cmdr. R. Randhawa, an aviation expert from the Indian Navy's Western Command. The journey from the Ratmalana airport was by a fully equipped Dornier maritime surveillance aircraft. In their regular assignments at home, pilots Lt. Cmdr. T. Saini and Lt. Cmdr. C. Subash flew sorties deep into the sea on surveillance missions. The sophisticated equipment on board was put into full use then.

The INS Jamuna is an oceanographic survey vessel of the Indian Navy. On December 26, soon after the tsunamis struck, it was converted into a 46-bed hospital. But, when the vessel docked into the Ashraff Jetty here, commanding officer Capt. Nair found security constraints prevented the hospital from functioning at the jetty. "We decided to move our medical teams to Nilaveli and Kuchchaveli. Later we moved out to other villages nearby. Initial operations were by helicopters," he says. Three sorties by Indian Air Force planes had brought in a ton of medical supplies to the Trincomalee district alone.

I accompany Capt. Nair by helicopter and travel short distances by road. This is to reach areas where Indian troops are engaged in relief and rehabilitation efforts. Kuchchaveli and its environs were only a minute away by air from areas far south of the guerrilla heartland in Mullaitivu. The pilots are cautious not to veer away from their flight path.

Since the tsunami catastrophe, there is much talk about rapprochement by diverse forces. Even if it is not manifest in Colombo, the epicentre of political power in Sri Lanka, Salli, a village near Nilaweli reflects this in great measure. One time arch enemies are working side by side in a welfare camp where 352 families are housed under small tents. Indian Navy doctors run a medical camp.

Dr. Mahendra Kumar says he and colleagues are treating old injuries since there had been no medical attention earlier. There are also complaints of diarrhoea and other infectious diseases.

Indian Navy personnel are busy constructing a community kitchen. Outside the tents, groups of Tiger guerrilla cadres and members of their own Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) attend to the needs of the displaced. A Sri Lanka Navy officer introduces me to them. They are all in civilian clothes. The female cadres are easily identifiable. They wear web belts. Sri Lanka Navy sailors are on hand liaising between the Indian troops and all others there.

In Sambaltivu, another major hearts-and-minds operation is under way. A team of Indian Navy divers move to clear contaminated wells. They are the only source of water for the villagers. They remove the debris and pump the polluted water out. Thereafter, they use chlorine to purify. This is a three-day long process. When it ends, salinity tests are carried out. Local health officials are called upon to testify that the water is potable.

Indian troops also engage in clearing debris from private homes and buildings. "We do this only in the presence of the owners. We have found valuables including money and returned it to them," says Captain Nair. There are also house owners who do not want debris cleared. Villagers tell me showing the debris enhanced prospects for higher compensation.

At the Eastern Naval Area Headquarters inside the Dockyard, I meet the senior most Government official in the district, M.D.A.G. Rodrigo. He is both Co-ordinating Officer and Government Agent. He is full of praise for the Indian role. "They were the first to arrive and have been most helpful. They gave us 300 tons of potable water and 97 power generators," he says. They also constructed bailey bridges at Salope Aru and Kinniya. They are now arranging to give us pre-fabricated houses for use by all three communities (Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim), he points out.

Mr Rodrigo says there are 27,000 displaced families in the district. A total of 1,076 had died and 5,934 houses had been damaged. A further 1,000 houses had been partly damaged. He says members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are serving in six different sub committees tasked with relief and rehabilitation activity.

Rear Admiral Upali Ranaweera, Commander Eastern Naval Area adds that it was the Sri Lankan armed forces in the district that provided hot meals to victims soon after the disaster. He says he is pleased at the level of rapport between his officers, men and their Indian counterparts.

Before arriving here on Monday, I visited Galle to see Indian relief and rehabilitation efforts there. The journey last Sunday was by a Chetak helicopter from Colombo. It landed on INS Sarda, an Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV), that lay berthed in the fisheries harbour. Commander Manohar Nambiar, the Commanding Officer who is to end his tour of duty this week, explains how his vessel was the first to arrive with urgent medical supplies and doctors.

They were in the Western seas off India. Naval staff and their next of kin were celebrating "Families Day." Orders arrived to rush to Colombo. They disembarked the families and sailed through the seas, still choppy after the tsunamis. After a twenty-hour journey, they reached the waters off Galle in the afternoon of December 27. They could not enter the port. Floating bodies, damaged boats, fishing trawlers and other wreckage were all over the area. Medical teams from the Indian Navy hospital Sanjivani, who were on board, were flown ashore hurriedly in helicopters.

Closenberg Hotel owner Kumar Abeywardena had made a magnanimous and patriotic gesture. He allowed his tourist hotel to be converted into a medical care centre. His staff even cooked food for the Indian doctors and troops who handed in their rations. They could not travel to their ship for meals since it had weighed anchor in the high seas.

When diving and survey teams arrived in the INS Sutlej, the clearing of the Galle port began. First was the "Sight Scan Sonar Operations" to identify under water objects. Following the process was a wire sweep - an exercise of dragging a steel wire at the bottom of the sea. The Galle harbour was cleared and INS Sarda came to be berthed in a jetty. They found that the arms of the clock at the Harbour Master's office had frozen at exactly 9.27 a.m. - the time when the first tsunami struck. More medical teams were moved to Hikkaduwa, Balapitiya, Batapola and Matara.

After a briefing on board INS Sarda, Commander Yogesh Dutt, who is assuming command of the OPV this week, escorted me on a drive along the battered South coast. We drive past the battered areas of Gintota, Rathgama, Hikkaduwa to reach Telwatte. At some points, Indian troops are helping fishermen repair their boats.

At Telwatte, not far away from the spot where tsunamis engulfed the lives of nearly 1,500 train passengers, Lt. Sunil Pillai and his men from of the Indian Army are pitching tents. They were gifts from the Government of Saudi Arabia. Once the toilets and a central kitchen were completed, displaced persons occupying a school were to move in there. Barely 200 metres away, they had built a 24-ton bridge that had washed away along the Telwatte-Meetiyagoda road.

I walked into a Buddhist temple. Displaced families had crowded the precincts. Indian troops were building a row of toilets. A little distance away, in an open patch there is a pile of clothes - shirts, trousers, dresses and even sarees. "Some villagers came to pick what they needed. Others don't seem to want these clothes. So they are just thrown," says Upali Silva, a villager. But in the Trincomalee district, there were thousands who badly needed clothes. Indian troops had also been involved in clearing wells in this area.

Five kilometres inland from the town of Rathgama, Indian teams are building a central kitchen at Reggiepura. Nearly 100 displaced families have been settled in tents in State land in this area.

Indian medical teams treat victims of the tsunami. The success of the Indian efforts, the first after tsunamis struck Sri Lanka, can be gauged from the public response. An Indian Navy sailor walked into a communications centre in Galle to obtain a phone call to his family in India. They readily obliged. When he offered to pay, an assistant refused to take the money. "You are doing so much for us," he said. Another sailor walked into a shop to buy a bottle of Ginger Beer in the Hikkaduwa area. The shop owner refused to charge. That was how grateful Sri Lankans said "bohoma Isthoothi," or thank you very much to India. They are there in Sri Lanka’s hour of need.

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