Chennaivasis woken up rudely by quake

Chennai, Dec 26: Several people in different parts of Chennai were shaken up on a lazy Sunday morning by the quake that hit the eastern coast of India around 6.40 a.m.

"Appa, see the glass is shaking. I am sure it is an earthquake," squealed Varshinya, a school student, who lives on the second floor of a flat in Kodambakkam. Her father said it was nonsense till he saw the neighbours rushing out of their houses. The residents of the 16 flats fled downstairs and were on the street for the next hour or so.

They had no idea what had hit them expect that they had experienced a powerful quake. It was only much later that they came to know that the epicentre of the quake was in faraway Sumatra!

And it was much, much later that they heard through the TV networks that there had been tidal waves on the Chennai coast and that several people had lost their lives.

S Asokan, who lives in Tondiarpet, was going to the market when he saw people rushing out of the Port Trust area. He thought it could be a fire caused by a petrol leak or some such thing. Then he heard the people talking about sea incursion, but said it did not reach the roads.

"I found my cot being shaken real bad. I thought I was imagining it or that my body was shaking. Only when the rest of the house woke up did I realise that it was a powerful earthquake," said Mathi, a college teacher, living in Kodambakkam.

She also experienced two aftershocks she said. Her brother Mani said he felt a gentle wave pass under the bed and came down to see if anybody else had experienced the quake. Residents of the street were all out by then, confirming his guess.

Sethulakshmy, who works for a book company and lives in Adyar, said her family was worried as their cousins lived in Besant Nagar. The cousins had felt the quake and saw the water seep in and were all set to evacuate. But as everybody in the area were out on the streets, they feared for the safety of the house also.

Sethulakshmy said she heard that one of her friend's sister-in-law, who had gone out for a walk near the Marina beach, had been washed away by the tidal wave. The family was looking for the body in Kalyani Hospital where several bodies had been sent.

Rangarajan, who lives in Mandavelipakkam, said people were sitting out in the streets several hours after the quake hit Chennai as there was talk of another quake or aftershocks hitting the metropolis.

People had gathered in huge numbers in the beach areas of Chennai to watch and wonder at the way water had entered the city. Many had lost their family members in the tidal wave that caught most of them unawares as they were sleeping.

Some of them at the beach were heard saying that the sea was showing its anger at the arrest of Kanchi Sankaracharya, Sri Jayendra Saraswati!

In T Nagar, Jeeva Mani, who had worked through the night at his office, felt his chair shake. He presumed he was not feeling well as he had not slept properly. He shifted to another chair and felt even that shake. Then security man Selvaraj and he looked at each other and dashed downstairs, realising that it was an earthquake. They were joined by several other residents on the street.

Looking at the house from the street where she and her husband had found sanctuary, Uma Maheswari, a college lecturer living in Kodambakkam, heard the glass on the verandah rattle and buckle. "The glass caved in and the house looked distorted when I looked at it through the glass." She sounded as if it was not just the glass that was rattled because she said she immediately said a prayer to Pamban Swamigal, whose samadhi can be found on the Tiruvanmiyur coast of Chennai.

Santhanam, who works for a private company and lives in Chromepet, said the people in his area had not felt the quake. He heard about it only when he listened to TV news. "And I did not realise it was so severe," he confesses. (S Chitra)