Caritas communicator Stefan Teplan travels to the tsunami-hit Kanyakumari and meets with the survivors of the devastating tragedy. Some people have survived the disaster and yet seem not to be there any longer. They are alive and yet seem to be dead. Vargees, a man in his forties is one of those living dead.
Psychosocial workers of Caritas and Kottar Social Service Society performed nearly a miracle with deeply traumatized tsunami victim Vargees. For months Vargees refused to talk, leave the house or interact with other people in any way. He always remained secluded in his house and was unable to overcome his depression. The gradual healing of his soul comes up to a resurrection of a living dead. All along the coastline of Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu in South India, thousands of people will forever mourn the loss of family members who were killed by the tsunami. But it is not only the dead that will never come back. Some people have survived the disaster and yet seem not to be there any longer. They are alive and yet seem to be dead. Vargees, a man in his forties is one of those living dead. “He just stopped communicating,” Sunitha, one of the KSSS social workers tells me. “While the tsunami did not break his neck or his legs, it broke his soul.” Sunitha is one of the KSSS social workers in charge of the psychosocial care-programme initiated and supported by Caritas. She and her colleague Darwin are probably the only people who have free access to Vargees’ house, a few hundred meters away from the shore where he had faced unimaginable scenes of horror. “Now he is better,” says Sunitha, “his wife and three children are having visitors every now and then, but the first months after the tsunami this flat was like a tomb. Nobody was to enter it. Vargees completely secluded himself from the outside world.” And since he did not talk, it was only gradually, step by step, that Caritas’ psychosocial workers found out the reason behind his silence. Vargees was at the shore on that morning of December 26, 2004, checking his boat he used to go fishing with. He heard something like the sound of a remote thunder, approaching so fast that what seemed to be still far away reached him in a few seconds. The tsunami waves hit the shores of Kanyakumari. Vargees managed to escape, but then he saw people who were fighting to survive, smashed to and fro by the power of the wave. At the risk of his own life Vargees went back, into the water, pulling all the people he could get hold of out of the water. He cannot now recall how many people he saved, but several families in the village of Colachel never forget what he has done. “Vargees,” Sunitha tells me, “saved one complete family and members of some other families.” Completely shocked, acting subconsciously and not being able to actually realize what had happened within a few minutes, Vargees only had one wish left: Go home and forget everything! Maybe wake up and realize everything had only been a nightmare. But it was then, on his way home, that he saw something he could never forget: There was someone he could not help any longer though he had saved many lives. Vargees saw the corpse of a man, lying on the riverside by the street, which was flooded by the water of tsunami. The eyes, the painful expression in the face of that dead man was something he could never forget. It was haunting him. It became an everlasting nightmare for Vargees. And from then on, Vargees just lived as if he was dead, too. He refused to talk, even to his wife and children. He was no longer able to work. He never left the house. His family could see him and yet he appeared to be invisible. It was as if he had become one with the dead man he found by the riverside. There was only one single person who could reach Vargees and it took her months: Sunitha’s predecessor, social worker Lalitha. She had the skills, the love and cautiousness that is required to heal deeply traumatized people like that. She was the only one Vargees accepted though he did not talk in the beginning. But at least he sat there, listening to her, sometimes allowing her to hold his hand. Day by day, Vargees began to open his soul again and speak. Speak of what he wanted to forget and just couldn’t. After Lalitha had to move somewhere else, he surprisingly accepted two new people very quickly: Sunitha and Darwin. They tell me: “That was because Lalitha introduced us and told him that we come from the same Church organization. He immediately trusted us. I think Lalitha prepared that well.” Sunitha and Darwin also prepare my brief visit well. Will it work? Will he allow a stranger to enter his house, after all these months of silence and seclusion? It works! One magic word breaks the spell. “We told him,” says Suntiha, “you come from Caritas, just like Lalitha, just like we do. He even allows you to take photographs as you requested.” So I sat in Vargees’ room. I was permitted to watch Sunitha and Darwin interact with him which they did amazingly cautious, with every gesture expressing their love and concern, in gentle voices, speaking to him and looking into his eyes, inquiring how he feels and delighted to hear about his progress: He is even leaving his house and talking to some people every now and then. Compared to what Sunitha said about his life the first months after the tsunami, Vargees’ present status is like the resurrection from the dead. Vargees did not talk to me directly. But through Sunitha, he again recalled what had happened on that unforgettable day. Vargees says he feels happy having survived the disaster though in the beginning he could not understand why. But he knows by now that life has to go on. At one moment, he even smiles. Sunithas smiles, too. Darwin smiles, too. I feel that I am a witness of something holy. “It’s a miracle”, I think. It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle what love can do.