NAGAPATTINAM: “Yaemmaa... The vehicle has come. Go fast. Else you may miss the ‘cotton’ (euphemism for sanitary napkins) again. There is no fresh water today to wash the wet (stained) clothes,” a woman rushed her teenage daughter, as the villager who gave this reporter a lift stopped in front of her hut in Pazhayatrankarai on Friday evening. At a distance, people were queuing up behind a mini-container truck to get the relief materials distributed by a volunteer group. “Aaathae, they said they have run out of candles. Ask the children to start their homework before it gets dark,” another woman told her mother-in-law. Over 20 days after Cyclone Gaja struck the Tamil Nadu coast, the residents have learnt to live without electricity – the storm felled virtually every tree, and power line and pole in its path.
Pazhayatrankarai, part of Thalaignayiru in Nagapattinam district has only one straight rocky road, that branches off from the Nagapattinam–Vedaranyam road. The village is 3km to the west of the Bay of Bengal. Houses, amidst paddy fields and prawn farms, are situated on either side of the Pazhayatrankarai road. People from a Most Backward Caste live to the front while those from a Scheduled Caste community live towards the back of the village. Dalit villagers saw that MBC residents access most of the relief materials, greeting the vehicles bearing necessities at they enter Pazhayatrankarai Road. Fewer vehicles reach the Dalit side of the village.
There are a few hand pumps seen in the village, but the proximity to the sea has made the groundwater saline. Power is required to operate the fewer borewells seen in the front side of the village. Villagers said a water tanker came once a week. “We had toilets in few of the houses, with thatched roofs. They became messier after the cyclone, with saline water rising in the toilets. Now, everyone has to do with open defecation,” said M Vijay.
Most of the villagers work as labourers in the paddy fields and prawn fields. As the sun slowly sets, women and some young girls go, in groups, towards a more isolated part of the village, with water bottles and sanitary napkins in hand. “They will have to finish defecating or urinating before we walk a kilometre to the primary school in the village to sleep. It gets uncomfortable for them when there are men from the other community, less familiar to them around. There are lights outside the primary school powered by generators. This makes it further embarrassing for the women to heed nature’s call in a corner nearby,” said P Sathiyamurthy.
The children are seen studying and doing their homework with light from solar lanterns, and a handful of candles. As the clock hand nears eight, the villagers finish dinner, quickly wash utensils and start walking, in groups, towards the primary school to spend the night. Some begin to charge their mobiles phones at junction boxes plugged into sockets in the school powered by a generator. The two communities retired for the night separately in the same school. The village does not receive newspapers. Now, without television or radio, gone with the cyclone, their only source of information about the outside world is via social media accessed through the mobile phones of the youngsters.
At the village of Vellapallam in Thalaignayiru block, where 90 per cent depend on fishing for their livelihood, by 10.30 pm half the residents are asleep. The women and children sleep inside the community halls, while some men sleep outside. A few fishers were finding it hard to sleep. “The depression is making us more restless than the lack of electricity. People in the Northern side of the district, have started fishing again while we are still worried about whether we will get the compensation we demanded for our boats. It is hard to sleep with so many thoughts running through the mind,” said N Anjappan, a fisher representative. “Not a single boat was deemed seaworthy after the cyclone.”
Vellapallam villagers have all of the beach on which to defecate in the morning. After 20 days without power to pump water to fill buckets in toilets, they have made their peace with open defecation.
“I have seen at least three cyclones in my life, and the Tsunami. But, this disaster has taken us back to how life was in the 1960s when we did not know what having electricity was like. I am only sad the younger generations have to endure, what I endured as a child,” mused 70-year-old A Ponnusamy from Pazhayatrankarai.
25 held for skirmish with police, minister
Nagapattinam: Twenty-five people were arrested on Friday night in connection with a fight that broke out between police and cyclone-affected residents near Vedaranyam last month in the aftermath of Cyclone Gaja.In one incident that took place near Thalaignayiru on November 18, Handlooms and Textiles Minister OS Manian was confronted by agitated persons. According to sources, the minister tried to leave the place on by hitchhiking on a motorcycle. Near Thalaignayiru, he was given a chase by people on motorcycles and eventually stopped.
An argument broke out between the minister and affected people that turned ugly with police having to come in to pacify the angry residents.On Friday, a video surfaced where Manian’s car is seen mobbed by people and a bearded man is seen trying to hit the minister’s SUV with a sickle in hand. According to sources, the incident happened near Kameshwaram on November 18. Manian escaped unhurt as his driver drove him to safety. The suspect ‘Funk’ Raja surrendered to police on Friday evening. Cases have been registered in Thalaignayiru and Keezhaiyur police stations with more arrests likely.