Anand Tharakad ’08 and his family had plans to fly to Sri Lanka on December 26, the day tsunamis ravaged coastlines throughout South Asia. At the last minute, Tharakad fell ill, and they canceled the trip.
“You start questioning, ‘Why did they have to die? Why are you here, alive?’” Tharakad said.
Such are the feelings of many South Asian students, whose home countries were devastated in the earthquakes and tsunamis of December 26. As the affected nations begin the long process of recovery, Wesleyan students reflect on their luck to be alive and consider the challenges of the relief effort.
For Tharakad, whose homeland of Java was not affected by the earthquake, one of the most alarming aspects of the tragedy was that he knew so little about the devastation occurring in the neighboring island of Sumatra.
“At first, no one seemed to be reacting as strongly as you’d expect,” Tharakad said. “Then we saw that there was not one structure left standing. We realized that this was larger than we thought.”
Tharakad said Indonesians have grown “immune” to destruction amidst a two-decade civil war. When the tsunami hit, coupled with widespread shock and panic, it contributed to disastrous confusion. The frantic search for information seems to be a common experience among students whose loved ones were directly affected by the tsunami.
Tharakad, who has family living in the coastal area of Chennai, India, said it took a day and a half for his relatives to fully update one another.
“It was odd because they were calling us about the earthquakes and we were calling them about the tsunami,” Tharakad said.
Kushan Karunaratne ’05, who was visiting extended family in Sri Lanka at the time of the disaster, said that his initial understanding was that Southern India was being plagued by flash floods. As with Tharakad, it took hours for Karunaratne’s concerned family, friends, and professors to contact him.
For many the joy of being alive and having their families intact is often intermingled with feelings of guilt and confusion. Survivors can face intense spiritual questioning in reconciling their own recovery with the loss of hundreds of thousands of other lives.
Like Karunaratne, Katherine MacLeod ’06, who lives in Bangkok, was not in an affected area and did not lose any family or friends. Yet in a place where “everyone was touched by at least two degrees,” according to MacLeod, it is impossible to ignore others’ grief.
“While I’m lucky to have all my friends and family intact, while I was in Bangkok [I couldn’t ignore] the air of grief and tragedy,” MacLeod said. “People went off on vacations and came back either having witnessed a terrifying scene or having lost their friends. Can you imagine how traumatizing?”
The stunned disbelief that accompanied the initial destruction has given way to resilience.
MacLeod described the atmosphere in her home city of Bangkok as “loving, gracious, and graceful.”
“Everyone was donating things and blood and money,” MacLeod said. “There was just generosity and empathy all around. It didn’t feel like we were being asked to donate to charity. It just felt like helping out our fellow Thais, and everyone was genuinely hurting from what had happened.”
“No one felt like doing anything other than helping out,” Karunaratne said.
In addition to helping to collect clothes, food, and medicine, Karunaratne will contribute to the recovery effort through the Wesleyan Cricket Club, which has plans to televise a February 13 charity Cricket match, to be held in India, and donate all the proceeds to relief organizations.
He also added that, on the whole, he has been impressed with the gestures of the United States and other nations.
Karunaratne emphasized that, although any donations to the relief effort are needed and appreciated, long-term assistance is also crucial to the economic recovery of affected nations as well as the safety of their people. He has resolved to reach out to affected families and, once he begins working, donate money annually to orphanages. In addition, Karunaratne said that his father plans to travel to Sri Lanka this summer and donate money to construction companies for the development of large housing projects.
“In two, three years time there will still be a great need for assistance, to help people get their lives on track,” Karunaratne said.
Leave a Reply