Creature Feature: a better kind of survival

AP photo (Canadian Press)
Everyone has seen this by now, I bet, but it makes me happy to think about it. This was taken on their one-year anniversary.
A year ago I made donations to Doctors without Borders and Oxfam. Both wrote and asked if the contributions, made for tsunami victims, might be directed to another of their programs, because the response for tsunami relief efforts was off the charts. The world's response was unprecedented. The billions in relief dollars, though, cannot blot out the anguish survivors will feel for the rest of their lives. How do humans deal with the loss of everyone they hold closest to their hearts? How do they "rebuild" their lives, their very identities?

This excerpt from an Outlook India.com article entitled "Tsunami relief: the darker side" shows once again how human nature constrains us, but unites us, as well: "Liquor shops and business establishments in Karaikal are witnessing a boom after the tsunami. Many people from Nagapattinam come here to shop for liquor, electronic goods, two wheelers and dress materials," says Kumaraswamy, a textile shop owner in Karaikal."In recent months, there has been a sharp increase of customers from Nagapattinam and Cuddalore, especially the fishermen, with many of them making purchases worth thousands of rupees," Kumaraswamy says. Karaikal is the preferred destination for such tsunami survivors because of two reasons - reduced prices at the Union Territory and anonymity from the prying eyes of local residents in Nagapattinam.

"We have been monitoring such cases and have advised such people to desist from these practices. Though the trend of spending money recklessly is prevalent among our community, we are convincing them to invest it in fixed deposit and in co-operative welfare schemes," says Mathiyazhakan, head of the fishermen's village panchayat in Akkarapettai - one of the worst-hit hamlets in this district."

Modern culture can pretty much be defined by the number and variety of diversions from reality it provides. Escapism. Denial. Are the fishermen of Akkarapettai finding a place at the flat earth table on account of their unspeakable losses? Would David Brooks or Thomas Friedman find a serendipitous angle to the story? Probably.

You note that the spokesman for the fishing village isn't talking interms of cowboy "freedom" and go-it-alone survival. He speaks of a co-operative venture. There is no other way they can hope to rise above the tragedy and try to find any peace at all within themselves. It can come only as a mutual effort and shared recovery.