It has been 20 years since the deadly tsunami struck, killing around 230,000 people across more than a dozen countries and causing unprecedented damage in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Thailand.
Dr K Sekar and Dr C Jayakumar, experts in Psychiatric Social Work (PSW), the National Institute of Mental Health & Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), who, along with other mental health experts from NIMHANS, were at ground zero, narrated the impact of the deadly earthquake under the Indian Ocean on women and their mental health.
“Majority of victims (of the tsunami) were women. Most of them did not know how to swim. There was death, devastation, loss and raw emotions of people. They were angry with kadal (ocean), which they had looked upon historically as god till that fateful morning of December 26, 2004. In Cuddalore, there was a belief that tsunami was the wrath unleashed by the sea goddess after some menstruating women touched the sea,” said Dr Sekar.
The tsunami exposed and tested the vulnerability of women like never before. “While many widowers got remarried, widow remarriage was not an easy option in many of the affected places except for some of those, who were childless and were given huge compensation by the government. This was in Nagapattinam,” he said.
“In some places in Kerala, women, who lost their children, were branded inauspicious by their families. After the first tide receded, it left behind a lot of fish on the seafloor. Ignorant of what lay ahead for them, these women with their kids went to pick up the fish and lost their little ones when the tide returned,” Sekar said.
‘Women, who had lost their husbands and kids, were branded bad omen’
“Many women, especially from the fishing community, also suffered naked syndrome,” the PSW expert said.”As a practice, fisher women go to receive their menfolk, who go to sea in trawlers. That morning, many women had gone to receive their men and ran for their lives on seeing huge walls of tides in the ocean. As they ran their saris got entangled in the bushes and other obstacles, and came out. They suffered naked syndrome when they were taken to relief centres. We had to counsel them,” Sekar said.
He narrated a poignant incident of some children in Nicobar, who caught hold of the sari of their teacher, who they saw being washed away in the sea. “They preserved the sari in a suitcase and at midnight, they would gather around it at the relief centre, open it to feel their teacher’s presence. They had also invited me to the ritual. Art therapy came a long way to help in children’s trauma resolution and rehabilitation.” he said.
Dr Jayakumar said while most men, who lost their wives to tsunami, got remarried, for most widows, remarriage was not an easy option because of social norms and stereotypes. They faced deeper mental health issues. “Many girls, who could have taken up higher studies, landed up getting married after loss of family status, livelihood and due to financial constraints,” he added.
“Women, who had lost their husbands and children, were branded as bad women. Many of them, who had undergone tubectomy before tsunami, underwent recanalisation. This reduced their stress levels and gave them hope. In Nagapattinam and other impacted districts, a lot of such surgeries were reported. It was worse for women, who were past their reproductive age,” Jayakumar said.
A team of around 150 mental health experts and staff under former director Dr D Nagaraja, NIMHANS and allied institutional projects, worked tirelessly in providing psycho-social support to tsunami victims in Andamans & Nicobar Islands, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry. In 2005, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare designated NIMHANS as the nodal centre for Psychosocial Support in Disaster Management.