Suppose you are one of the volunteers who went to the Andaman and The Nicobar Islands for relief work after the tsunami. You work in the relief camps, distributing food, water, and medicine among the victims. You listen to the various stories of bravery of ordinary people even as they fight against odds to bring about some semblance of normalcy in their lives. You admire their grit and determination. Write a diary entry.
28thDecember,2004
Today I was to go to the southwest part of the town, one of the worst-hit areas. As fixed earlier, I and three other volunteers were picked up by the rescue party van at six a.m. in the morning. A clean one hour journey and another hour of walk brought us to the horrible sight of death, despair and the hope called life. Every place where a hut stood earlier, were some muddy aftereffect, the stench of rotten bodies pervaded the whole place, and amidst all this, a sudden meowing had our attention. Soon we realized, it was coming from behind a huge tree. I asked the others to wait and worked my way to the back of the tree only to see a baby, alive and kicking, on a piece of clothing, nearly damp. Spellbound, I could only gesture the others to follow and they were equally dumbstruck. We could not imagine how a baby could survive a tsunami when its mother emerged and said she gave birth to her baby daughter on 26th December night, on that very tree. The mother was nearly unable to move since she had eaten nearly nothing for over two days and was feeding the baby who was equally weak. We all thanked God and started on with our duties. The mother later told us, she named her baby “Tsunami”.