<< I can’t believe we’ve both made it out alive. I know immediately how lucky we are, it is almost beyond words to describe the pure joy of being given a second chance. Like being born again, only better….being fully aware of what a beautiful gift life is, and how delicate and fragile it can really be.
I look around the slope we are now on and see the other people who were staying in our guesthouse; Dutch, German, American, Swiss, English. And of course the local families from the houses around us.
We were all in a bizarre state of panic and trauma. Many were drenched, some were dry as they had escaped from the upstairs rooms, even managing to get their bags and everything.
We, on the other hand, had lost all our possessions. All I had left was a cheap imitation Casio watch that I’d bought in Cochin, Kerala a couple of weeks previously.
It was the cheapest model I could find, at about 170 Indian Rupees. The friendly shop-owner had assured me it was waterproof. At the time I’d ridiculed the idea, but now I knew he’d been telling the truth!
Within a minute or two the immediate relief of survival had subsided and the realization that the chaos was only just beginning was starting to sink in. In the baking tropical sun people were screaming and crying. Rushing to and fro, torn between running away uphill, or heading back to the beachfront to look for survivors and valuable possessions that the waves had taken.
Looking towards the side of the house I saw a man lying on his back with one leg being held in the air by another traveler, Tim. His leg was bleeding profusely from a deep ankle wound, with just a bit of cloth tied round it as a makeshift tourniquet. He was shouting and crying in English as Tim (the American gut from our guesthouse who had been sitting out the front on the beach when the first wave struck) tried to calm him down, babbling and laughing hysterically as he did so.
At the time his laughter made me angry, but obviously this was his way of dealing with the extreme trauma. 8 hours later I saw him walking near the hospital and he was still laughing manically.
The injured man was shouting, pleading us to: 'Go and look for my girlfriend, leave me! Please, pleas go and look for her, her name’s Claire, she’s still down there.' Shantha meanwhile was running around, doing his best to organize people. It was obvious that we needed to get this guy to a hospital, as otherwise he could die from blood loss, but he didn’t want to be moved.
At one point, which I will never forget, he looked at me straight in the eyes and said: 'Please mate, please go and look for my girlfriend, I can’t move.' There was no way any human could not respond to such a direct plea, so me and Bob Dewhurst (another English guest at our place, who had earlier pulled Helen to safety through a window) stumbled back down the slope towards the rubble that lay between us and the beach.
At this point (maybe 15- 20 minutes after the first waves) we couldn’t see the ocean at all'.I guess it must have been during the time when it went back out into the bay, before ferociously coming in again an hour or so later.
We crawled over stacks of broken wood and concrete shouting: 'Claire! Claire!' We got down to where their bungalow had been. It had collapsed in on itself and was now just a pile of concrete and timber. There was no one there. Even if there had been a dead body, we would have seen it. There was nothing, so we clambered back up the slope again, still shitting ourselves in case the waters returned.
Shantha then organized 5 of us (including himself) to carry the injured guy up to the road and into a car that could hopefully get him to hospital. As we carried him he showed incredible presence of mind, despite his terrible injury, to encourage us, saying: 'You’re doing well lads, keep it up, you’re doing brilliant.’ Or words to that effect.
Just as the car was about to drive away I remembered to ask him his name. His reply was: 'Alex Hill, from Bristol, no, London.'>>
