'December 26, 2004 was the day when we were all reborn.'
Come December 26, V Raghupathy, 54, a senior executive with a software company, and his family -- wife and grown up son and daughter -- will celebrate their 20th birthday!
"December 26, 2004 was the day when we were all reborn," says Raghupathy.
It was on the fateful December 26, 2004 morning that the tsunami hit the Tamil Nadu coast swallowing about 8,000 lives.
Raghupathy and his family were spending their holiday at a seaside resort near Chennai. They had checked in on December 24 and on Christmas day they visited Dakshinchitra, a heritage centre.
"We had been to the beach that night," recalls Raghupathy. He didn't know that the next morning the sea would visit the shore ferociously, turning the morning into an unforgettable nightmare.
On the tsunami day, he and wife Krithika had gone to the glass walled restaurant at the resort for breakfast.
Fortunately, he had cajoled his then very young children -- Mathangi and Anirudh -- to have breakfast and then frolic in the resort pool.
As Raghupathy was picking up a plate at the restaurant, a sudden commotion caught his attention.
Through the glass wall, he saw a massive blue wall of water. Dropping the plate, he shouted to Krithika to run towards the road taking off her high heels.
Raghupathy grabbed his kids, put them on his shoulder and began to run.
He told Krithika: 'God willing, I'll meet you outside with the children. Otherwise, you just carry on with your life.'
The huge wave crashed into the restaurant's glass wall.
"The water reached chest level. I held my children tightly and waded through the flood, making my way to the road," Raghupathy remembers, reliving those terrifying moments.
Later that afternoon, after returning home and turning on the television, he was struck by the enormity of the devastation -- the tsunami had claimed over 230,000 lives across Asia, with nearly 8,000 dead in Tamil Nadu and around 180 in Chennai alone.
After that terrifying day, the Raghupathys didn't visit the beach for a long time.
For sometime Anirudh was terrified of water and Mathangi used to get up startled at night.
Over the years things became normal for the two children.
"After the tsunami I value life very much. Every second counts. One should live this moment. One will never know what will happen the next moment. Couple of years back COVID-19 happened and 5/6 relatives of my wife died," says Raghpathy.
It was due to his parents' blessings, their good deeds, the grace of the family deity and the blessings of his guru that saved him and his family from the tsunami, he says.
"At home, I am known as Balaji. After the tsunami my uncle started calling me Tsunami Balaji," Raghupathy laughs.
But what made him run towards the road on seeing the blue wall of water?
"I had experienced a flood in Tirunelveli in 1991. At that time the Thamirabarani river was flooded. The village where I was staying was flooded in seconds and the water submerged the ground floor. I then realised the power of water and that experience triggered me to run towards the road on seeing the blue wall of water," says Raghupathy.
During the 2015 Chennai floods, Raghupathy mustered courage to save his sister's family with the help of the Chennai Corporation.
"It is certainly an achievement that we survived the tsunami," says Krithika.
Today son Anirudh is studying for a master's in engineering management in the US and Mathangi is in the final year of an architecture degree.
"I only have a blurry image of that fateful December 26, 2004. I was around two then. I remember the swimming pool and the resort cottage. My brother used to tell me tsunami stories," says Mathangi.
Ten years after the tsunami the Raghupathys returned to the same beach resort.
"My father explained where we were on that day," says Mathangi, "and when the tsunami hit the coast."
Venkatachari Jagannathan can be reached at venkatacharijagannathan@gmail.com.
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com
