The tsunami struck Matara at 9 23 on the morning of Sunday the 26th December 2004. I was in a small 30 seater inter-city bus on the coast, with my beloved father and a dear friend named Dieter. There were perhaps 3 minutes between us and a monstrous, 30 foot high, wall of destruction ploughing directly towards us at the speed of a runaway train.
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This was the most terrifying moment I have ever faced and perhaps ever will. Thousands of metric tonnes of churning, raging, impersonal annihilation was coming straight for us. We were staring certain death in the face. I could not move.
Passengers in the bus had begun screaming in panic and grappling their way out. Human decency had given way to a sheer atavistic desperate race for survival. They had chosen, tragically for everyone of them, to outrun the wave.
I felt screams locking up my throat but somehow I was too weak to even let them form. I was simply paralyzed. I knew we had to run, but looking back at my father and then the wave, I simply couldn't move. I turned to Dieter, choking incoherently, feeling my breath twist in panic.
"No," he said, suddenly holding me by both shoulders, as if to shake me, but I knew it was simply to give me the strength I needed now. "Listen to me" he said. "Breathe!"
There was a moment where I thought I would lose consciousness but mercifully it passed. I looked into his steady blue eyes. They were very calm. "We may die anyway. "He said, turning to his mother tongue which he knew I would instinctively pay attention to, since he had taught this to me for so long. "We have to face this, my gazelle, so we must be strong. We will not run like wild goats but face this with dignity"
He released me suddenly and moved as quick as a dancer over to the doors, which he pulled shut firmly. Suddenly there was only one sound in the world. The engines had been gunned, the screaming had faded, there was only the roar of the wave, and it was coming closer.
Dieter reached me as quickly as he had gone and we sank into our seats again, in a strange little huddle, my father on one side, me in the middle with tears streaming down my face because no matter what Dieter said, no matter what happened to me, I could not bear to think of my beloved father dying this way- because no matter how brave I tried to be, this was that final moment I was going through and I was bewildered and unprepared.
And then the wave hit us.
The bus simply lifted off the ground. Dizzyingly, unbelievably it was being pushed along at a un definable speed, without any kind of resistance for uncountable yards inland. We braced ourselves…there was suddenly an obstacle of some kind and then there was a strange silence.
I knew we were now underwater, stuck against something. Little trickles of water pushed in at the seams of the windows. The curtains were still drawn and I did not want to look out.
Minutes passed and we cried our prayers quietly. In those moments, I faced sheer unbelievable terror: I also found out the meaning of true love: I felt the unbearable dread of losing my beloved father above all, and then Dieter took, from around his neck , his most precious talisman, a locket with the beautiful face of Mother Mary engraved in it , which he slipped into my hands, with a quiet prayer and a small smile , asking me to be strong for him.
The world had grown silent except for sinister gurgles of water trickling in through crevices of the vehicle. And yet we knew that there were strong currents pushing at it, and heavy bodies of matter passing close by. There could have been trees, debri from the destruction , whatever was pushed along by the current- in my minds eye I saw the bodies of my co passengers of late dragged helplessly along.
There was terrible brooding power in this silence.
And then, agonizingly, slowly, the water began to subside.
It would be over.
We had made it- strangely, unfairly we had been spared. We who were perhaps the most ready to die, had been allowed back to this earth. Because Dieter had not let us run, we would live to see another beautiful Sri Lankan day. I will never understand why.
The bus had lodged into a building, someones house, about a kilometer inland , which I heard was something that had happened to quite a few vehicles that day. But out of all passengers who entered that bus , we were the only ones that had survived.
The following hours were a dizzy haze I can barely recount. There were bodies everywhere, blank faces, mutilated people , the injured running vacantly around , and at some point I was carrying twin babies of about six months of age , whose bodies I had found in a car , and I was crying inconsolably. I cannot accept the fate that had led me to them, they were beautiful and as I recount this story the tears are beginning to flow again. I remember praying that some day these two lovely children would come back to me.
If ever I had children I wanted their souls to be reborn as my own children. They deserved to live, and to be happy and to play on the beach.
My people too miraculously, were safe, and Dieter remained in the country a few weeks more, the caring, gentle soul that he was, helping people wherever and however he could.
Continuing on the journey he began on the 26th of December, he subsequently left the country, left my life totally and he did not look back.
Something changed that day to all of us, and to Dieter, it was a flash of realization.
That there was a meaning in life and a meaning in death and that there had to be a way towards understanding both. This was something he had to search for. He had seen a higher calling, had laid eyes on the shores of another, darker more dangerous sea, one that we must all escape from someday
I understand this.
Time passed.
In time I met a wonderful and understanding man of my own race, who helped my heart to heal and my soul to sing. Just last month we were married, basking in the delighted smiles of our parents and all our relations.
The beach is clean and sunny again, life is good to me and the future looks promising.
But, I will not forget Dieter for as long as I live.
And now you understand why.
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