I took this photograph peering through one of the tunnel-like openings formed by the massive stone walls in the base of "The Liberty statue of India", a 133 feet (40.5 m) tall stone sculpture of the Tamil saint and poet Tiruvalluvar, author of the Thirukkural. (Thirukkural, a classic of couplets, or aphorisms, is considered to be the first work to focus on ethics in Dravidian Literature). The sculpture was completed in 2000 and is located atop a small island near the town of Kanyakumari, which lies on the southernmost tip of the The Indian Peninsula, where three bodies of water, the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea meet.
On my trip through Tamil Nadu in Southeast India in February I met and talked to several people whose lives are intrinsically tied to the ocean, and who told me their personal accounts of the terrible morning in December of 2004, the day of the most infamous tsunami. One was a young fisherman who by night sells beautiful sea shells on Chennai beach. He and his friend were preparing to go out to the sea in their small wooden boat that morning. They were spared, but the mother of his friend was killed by the wave. Another one, an old man, was doing his usual chores at the Gandhi Memorial in Kanyakumari, preparing the museum for the opening, when the tsunami hit. Everything inside the museum was destroyed, he told me, all the photographs were washed away, windows shattered, but he, save for the vision in one of his eyes, was spared. The wave was so enormous, he told me, that it touched the shoulder of Tiruvalluvar's statue. I looked back at the statue from where he and I were standing. It was dwarfing the tiny figures of people gathered at its feet. And I would have thought that this man is a reincarnation of baron Munchausen. Except that I was full well aware of the extensive damage that this tsunami had produced in the region, and seen areas still desolate of life, 6 years after. So I stood there, stretching my imagination around this new information like some Glad Cling Plastic Wrap over an elephant, and feeling increasingly queazy.
I look at this photograph, and the calmness and peace of the three oceans are astonishing if not reassuring, in the perspective of things. As if it was tamed and composed by the dark square of the dense stone frame, and smoothed out from above by the silver light. A finishing touch - a tiny boat in the distance - was added by a pedantic producer last minute. And voila, we've got ourselves a very agreeable picture. As if there never was a wave that touched the poet's shoulder...
