None Really

Rating: 9/10 (20 October 2015)

I saw this for the first time last night and it had a terrible effect on me. Let me explain. My wife had been badgering me for years to visit India. She was born in Uganda to parents of Indian origin and had always wanted to visit her 'home' country. After many years I finally agreed and duly we booked a two week holiday with our children (14 and 20 at the time) in Kerala in a hotel a few miles north of Kovalam. The flight was awful but I kept thinking of the idyllic time we would spend on the beach. On our second or third day we booked a three day trip to visit the backwaters and the hills (Periyar) and set off three days before Christmas day. After a good trip we arrived back at the hotel late on Christmas Day. My wife said that we would get up early the next day to visit the sacred Hindu site of Kanyakumari. We woke up well after 8am the next morning and my wife said that she was exhausted from our previous trip. Perhaps we should just go down and have a leisurely breakfast and then lounge by the pool. I agreed and so did the 'kids'. We ended up by the pool, a stone's throw from the sea at about 9.30. It was hot and after a while my wife said she would go and get some cold drinks after a wander along the beach. About fifteen minutes later she came back and said 'Have you heard the news ? There's been a tsunami and people have had to be pulled from the water'. A thousand questions followed 'Where, when, should we move ?'. I was sceptical. We would have been dead if a tsunami had hit. News filtered in, in dribs and drabs and slowly the immensity of the catastrophe began to sink in. We were prevented from going onto the beach and the stories began to circulate about how tide had gone out for a long way at Kovalam beach and the police had had to order people off the beach. Later that night we walked along the part of the hotel where it met the beach and two old ladies that we had become acquainted with were sitting sipping G&Ts. We asked what they had done that day and had they heard the news? Yes, they had been on their way to Kanyakumari and their taxi had broken down. When they arrived, they were in a line of hundreds queuing for the boats to take them across to them temple. They witnessed first hand the immense waves sweep hundreds to their deaths and the shock, no traumatized, onlookers realizing that their loved ones had been killed. large families had been split up due to the numbers able to be taken at a time by the boats. The next day I spoke to a honeymoon couple who were on a 'safari', on their way down to beach when the lead vehicle had spotted something wrong and had had the presence of mind to turn the convoy around, thus saving many lives. What impacted me the most was the randomness of the event. Some were killed yet some were spared. Two hundred had died in the backwaters where we had been to on the previous trip and fifteen hundred plus had been at Kanyakumari on that terrible day. Mothers, Fathers, sisters, brothers and so on had died that day and yet we had not even noticed the event on our beach or in our hotel. For several years after, I could not come to terms with this and even avoided watching any news related to it. Then the other night I saw this film for the first time and it was too much to bear. I cannot adequately explain my feelings and my sorrow at the deaths of so many. There is not even the anger at being able to say they could have been avoided. I feel helpless and insignificant. I don't have anxiety or nightmares, I only feel empty. It's what my soldier father used to call 'dead man walking'. He said many soldiers felt it after a battle having survived, while many of their comrades died. Not being able to comprehend why some had died, but they had survived. Perhaps this is it. This film was superb and brilliantly acted, so much so, it has awoken some terrible feelings.