Water Came Like A Fall

After the Tsunami: Green friends' Green Shore

June 4, 2005

Water came like a wall during the tsunami of 26 December 2004.

When a wall of water hits wall of thatch or even concrete, something crumbles. A home.

The 16-kilometer long island of the Alappad Panchayat in Kerala, illustrated this all too well when hundreds of homes, both modest and “pucca”, were demolished by the tsunami the day after Christmas.

But when a water-wall hits something not flat and solid like a house wall, but something with upright pieces and spaces between—like a forest--maybe nothing crumbles. Or less.

This is what people observed on that fateful day: when the wall of water hit trees, it broke apart, and lost some of its force.

From the roof of the Ayurveda building: the tsunami wave loses some force when “cut” by trees.

Neighboring houses could be both 100 feet from the water’s edge; one has trees intervening, and the other doesn’t. One survives the tsunami; the other doesn’t. Not always, of course, but enough to make a pattern, and enough to suggest that trees along the shore are a good idea.

In Tamil Nadu, the amount of damage from the tsunami was far less on stretches of seashore where mangrove forests stand. Trees on a beach help slow the erosion of sand even in normal times; their roots hold the beach in place; their dropped leaves or needles help make mulch, and what once was barren sand can slowly evolve into fertile ground. All these elements can work together to make a beach more hospitable, whether in ordinary times or when natural cataclysms strike.

This is why it is no small matter that GreenFriends, the environmental activism organization of the M. A. Math, is acquiring (gift of the Forest Service) 100,000 casuarina saplings to plant along the 16 kilometer stretch of the island that is home to the Alappad Panchayat (and the Math). (Mangroves grow well in the conditions in Tamil Nadu, but Kerala's beaches are more suited for casuarinas.)

Could it be called prescience on Amma’s two years ago that, when the M. A. Math’s Ayurvedic facility right on the seashore was opened, part of the celebration was the planting of trees there, just inside the water-wall of piled stones? At that time, of course, there were just seedlings, tiny, spindly things, roots encased in potting soil.

“We did all that planting in one day,” Amma reminisced yesterdays in Seattle, where her summer US Tour has just begun. “Ashramites came over and dug the holes, planted the trees and watered them, all by hand in one day.”

Amma was there as well, and not only participated in the work and supervised it, but spent some time with all who gathered, meditating there by the sea, the sound of the waves rhythmic in the background.

The needle-leafed plants in the foreground are the casuarina seedlings, two years ago.

“We planted the trees far enough apart that big trucks could come between to deliver
more rocks for the sea wall,” Amma explained.

Casuarinas grow fast—compare the tiny seedlings above with these big trees—

Casuarinas trees at the beach

A soft green forest running the length of the Ayurvedic building’s seashore property is the result of the ashramites’ planting efforts on that day in May of 2003. What will result from the efforts on World Environment Day, 5 June 2005, will be a forest like this but sixteen kilometers long.

“We’re going to plant trees all the length of the island,” Amma said Saturday, the day before the GreenShore Project will begin back in Kerala. You could almost detect a little wistfulness when she described how the Math residents and villagers will gather to plant the baby trees.

If she were home instead of on tour, you can be sure she would be there on the beach, squatting in the sand, having dug out a suitable hole for the seedling cradled in her lap. She would kiss it the way a mother kisses her baby, and then place it in its new home, patting the earth around it, and kissing the tender new bit of life once more before moving on to the next.

From Janani,
Amritapuri Correspondent
(A report from Seattle, Washington)

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