Hambantota, Memories Of A Tsunami Devastated Town – By Sunimal Perera
Image Source : hdcc
“And when one weeps with eyes of welling tears. Remembering a realm of pristine charm. The thoughts languish on some fond bygone years. The sadness rife surveying nature’s harm. A heavy heart now beats in soft refrain, To quell the surging ghosts of this terrain !”
This is Hambantota Bay (Photo may be unavailable) looking in a southerly direction from where approximately the local fishmarket used to stand in the fish market stood in the 60’s as I recall , and all that is left now as depicted is a wasteland of debris, desolation and emptiness which epitomizes what the Tsunami left behind in Hambantota as part of its sad legacy which also traversed a vast stretch of the coastal belt of Sri Lanka in a trail of horror and devastation never before seen in such magnitude in this part of the world.
A twisted and unusable bicycle, a boat washed ashore, perhaps some poor mortals’ only means of transportation and livelihood also bear testimony to Hambantota’s devastation as a vast expanse of empty lonely space as far as the eye can see, which stares back in solemn silence as one gazes in disbelief at this heartbreaking landscape where only, a now tranquil bay in the distance seems calm compared to its picture post card setting of just a month ago! It also took the lives of personal friends holidaying as far away from Hambantota as Yala National Wildlife Park snatched away into the turbulent ocean and left behind a few survivors who had a terrifying encounter to describe.
My memories of this idyllic beachside town goes back to a time when I was a little boy filled with a sense of adventure and the love of the ocean and the times I spent in Hambantota with two members of my immediate family.
A maternal uncle and aunt were once stationed there with their families, the former as Divisional Revenue Officer and subsequently Assistant Commissioner of Agrarian Services and the latter whose husband was the Government Agent, a tall broad shouldered and disciplined gentleman well known and respected in the community and various enclaves of the many Governent Officers stationed there at the time, being the Chief Government representative for the Region.
Hambantota holds cherished memories for me as I spent many long holidays there with my relatives and also lived for sometime with my Uncle and Aunt who occupied the Residency at the time, through whom I was privileged to enjoy the beauty of this pristine place and around whom my time in Hambantota was richly spent and embellished with the joyful exuberance of life which both my Aunt and Uncle generated as they were wonderful people who brought so much joy into my life.
In those days it was a haven for holidaymakers both in Hambantota and nearby Bundala, wild life buffs enroute to Yala and Weerawila Game Sanctuaries and pilgrims on their way to Tissamaharama and Kataragama.
My personal anecdotes about Hambantota are cherished and etched in my memory forever while my immediate thoughts reflect upon the countless number of residents and visitors who became victims to the ravages of a cruel sea in deadly turbulence set in place by an equally deadly subterranean earthquake whose coming they never knew until it was practically upon them in the flash of an eye! It took the lives of many friends
Reflecting on the post Tsunami Hambantota today as I surveyed then the damage caused consequently, I am deeply saddened by the battering it has taken from the onslaught and hope fervently that Hambantota will be restored to at least a semblance of its former beauty which perhaps in an idyllic sense was incomparable to any other location I have ever been in and I say this as a personal tribute from the depths of my heart to the town and its town folk, simple, warm hearted, friendly people typifying most of Sri Lanka whose pain and grief I share very deeply.
I had many friends there some of them poor fisher folk who put out to sea in their huge catamarans and later the mechanized fishing boats and the gang of fisherfolk who cast the Ma Della or Big Net each Sunday and dragged it in to their hypnotic chant of Odi Helleiya as I watched in fascination at the vast array of fish, prawns and crabs as they were arranged into pre-auction baskets taken from the net. Being recognized as the ‘podi sir ‘ from the ‘ Ejantha Gedara’ as I was sometimes called, I was often given a medium sized Bonito or Tuna fish which I would carry home and into the kitchen for a delectable Ambul Thiyal they were eventually transformed into by the cullinary expertise of the servants and in particularly a Malay boy who was a local resident through whom I made many Malay friends.
Hambantota has a large Malay population alongside the Sinhalese residents and I have sadly recieved information since learned that many families , some closely known to me were decimated and wiped out by the Tsunami and I d out.I dedicate this narrative to their memory as well as all of Hambantota.
This was the town where the famous British writer Sir Leonard Woolf served as Government Agent and was inspired to write his memorable novel “The Village In The Jungle” , Sinhala Translation Beddegama, based on a nearby village deep in the recesses of the fauna infested Ruhuna Jungles and lived in the same majestic Residency or Government House that I occupied many years later courtesy of my Uncle and Aunt .It was a glorious tribute to Dutch Architecture once typifying the period of Dutch Occupation of Ceylon with a Garrison and Parade Ground to match, restored to an even greater ambience of British architectural traditions refurbished and built solidly atop a hill , a vast house with huge rooms, massive oak doors, a regal interior of spacious living and dining quarters both for its Prominent Occupants and servants as well as a row of vast stables designed originally for Horses and converted to garages.
The walled Residency had a commanding view of the entire Hambantota Bay and ocean surrounding it, with miles and miles of endless wild coastline inter spaced in places with steep columns of rocks and the remnants of an ancient pier washed away with time and only the concrete columns now standing, where the ocean surf boomed constantly, crashing huge waves against them as I recall listening in awe to the sound of the surf from my room, often late into the night, a sound which fascinates me to this day wherever the surf booms against rocks and I travel back in time to Hambantota albeit with a haunting ring to it accompanying the many voices of the dead whose spirits surely linger on along the coast !
Mercifully the Residency has been spared of the ravages of the perilous Tsunami and still languishes as a majestic sentinel almost in sad perspective bearing testimony to a vast tragedy that unfolded there as the rest of coastal Hambantota has been reduced mostly to rubble and debris and most of its humanity who lived along the coastline washed away to sea together with their livelihood as this has been an area of heavy human casualties where the low lying areas were once heavily inhabited and only a lonely high wind now prevails across the beaches, desolate but for the purple periwinkles and ipomea swaying sadly in iambic rhythm to a staccato of the leaves of sentinel Palms dotting the coastline almost as in a requiem for the dead.
But Oh how horrendous it was! when the tsunami struck this tranquil beachside town and enveloped its helpless, screaming residents in a instant and caught them unawares that fateful morning of the murderous crashing of gigantic waves, the flailing hapless victims carried by the swirling merciless vortex of churning black water to be battered against the rocks and concrete of collapsed buildings, their bodies crushed beyond recognition, their very souls torn apart as the wailings of the living for the dead rose in a strange crescendo long after the wrath of nature had subsided taking its toll and the lucky survivors had an incredible mind shattering story to tell.
Hambantota today has been sadly transformed into a city with modern day trappings as the old vestiges which made it unique and memorable as I remember it don’t seem to exist anymore. The peaceful bay with its fish market as a backdrop and the stone columns reaching into the ocean perhaps a pier once, going back to Dutch times have been removed in an effort to build a shipping harbour where many pristine artifacts which lent an idyllic perspective to the place removed and replaced by a large port intended for seagoing ships. A fisheries harbour nearby houses the local mechanised fishing boats and the beach which once saw many catamarans and outtriger boats belonging to local fisherman vastly empty of the crafts that provided a living for them. These were amazingly deft navigators who, guided by the stars and their instincts ventured out to the high seas and returned after many days with their catch, at times with a bounty of a harvest or the despair of lost companions taken by the cruel sea attested to by the wailing widows who came to the Residency looking for restitution from my uncle.
My love affair with Hambantota began as a child as my maternal Aunt Felicia whose husband Thambayah Sivagnanam was the then Government Agent stationed there as referred to previously.They took me for memorable holidays during the Mid ‘1960s and I loved the place from the very moment I set foot on it and saw its idyllic splendour which I thrived upon and created my own adventures with my wanderlust filled mind and the rapscallion streak within me narrowly escaping punishment from my peers at times!..
A place depicted in the Enid Blyton books in memory of a part of Cornwall I had read as a child which also fired my imagination.
The road that leaves Hambantota towards Tissamaharama from the Town limits comes to a fork at a point and skirts the Salt Pans to re-join it further down and runs through scrub jungle once inhabited by a single elephant wrongfully dubbed a Rogue which he probably was not but aggressive enough to chase after traffic that drove along the lower road skirting the salt pans and I once happened to be on the pillion of the scooter of a friend taking me to his estate in Tissamaharama who decided to take the lower road and suddenly there was an elephant chasing us with me hanging on for dear life and my friend speeding away on his Lambretta with the patchyderm behind us which we left behind as we made it to the main road. and we breathed a sigh of relief.
We never heard about this ‘pachyderm’ since but hopefully he was captured and released into the more elephant inhabited jungle areas of Hambantota or even transferred to one of the country’s zoos..
Wild Elephants were a scourge of the area many years ago through no fault of their own having been the original inhabitants of the pristine forests encroached upon by humans and their habitat and migratory routes either built up or destroyed.
There was this famous case at Bundala village, another salt producing area in the Hambantota Region where a complete village was set upon by a group of wild elephants and destroyed where virtually all inhabitants were brutally killed.
An Englishman by name of Mr.Butler at the time living on the fringes of the beach on a vast acreage with whom I had made friends, a neighbour of my uncle Stanley who was DRO (Divisional; Revenue Officer) said he encountered elephants almost daily in previous years and a young bull from nearby herd regularly visited him to graze on shrubs in his backyard, relatively non aggressive but long gone since, he also said wistfully.
Hambantota then was indeed a place of adventure and folklore too where the Malay inhabitants believed in the occult and were superstitious as the story I’m about to relate is a first hand acount and has bearings towards this theme. Noiydahamy was my uncle’s jeep driver a scruffy Malay individual in his late 40s who loved his evening drink which was in most cases the local ‘hooch’ of some form at times obtained from the local Tavern. One morning he was scheduled to drive my Uncle on a circuit to nearby villages but never showed up and this was his story in his own words.
Around 5.30 a.m. in darkness as the sun had not yet risen he was walking to pick up the jeep for the circuit from the Kachcheri near the the Residency on the lower road past the Resthouse which had a stepped short cut from the Lower Road leading to the Residency and still somewhat imbibed and groggy from the previous nights drinking perhaps decided to take the short cut. Halfway up the steps he noticed a shaggy dog crouched in his path and kicked at it swearing when sudenly the dog turned into a large looming figure and struck him on the side of his face and all he remembered was waking up at his house with his mother tending to him and the local excorcist or Kapu Rala as he was known performing some religious rites and chanting over him.There were finger marks on his face and neck and he was very ill for a few days, lucky to be alive he said but nursed back to health.He had been discovered lying unconscious in a nearby ditch and transported to his home by passers by who had recognized him, being well known in the neighbourhood as the Residency jeep driver.
My uncle had waited for him for hours and called off his program and rescheduled it and was eventually told this story too when he turned up for work some weeks later. He had simply said he was “struck by Mahasona” on his way to pick up my uncle, a commonly known phenomenon known mostly in local folk lore as well as around the country but perhaps with some semblance of truth to it as it bore similarities in each case of a dog looming up to be some kind of monster who would strike the victim and there even had been known fatalities.
I continued my existence at Hambantota but never used the shortcut where the incident occured and hardly ever walked that way at night remembering Noiydahamy’s story.
I continued visiting the Residency with my Aunt and Uncle intermittently sometimes staying on for weeks and never forgot those idyllic days.
© Sunimal Perera, Montreal ,Canada.
(To be contd.)
