Posted on Fri, Jan. 28, 2005
AP: Tsunami-Hit Island Had One Survivor NEELESH MISRA
CAMPBELL BAY, India - For 25 days after the tsunami killed everyone else on his island, Michael Mangal roamed the expanse in just his underwear, waiting for death and praying for life, thinking of the spirits that terrified him and the woman who never loved him.
Finally one day, he heard the chugging of a distant motor boat. He took off his underwear and began waving to the men who would rescue him - dazed, dehydrated and naked.
Now, he wants to return. The 40-year-old widower was rescued Jan. 19 from Pillowpanja island, at the southern end of India's remote Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. All of the other 100 or so islanders were washed away by the Dec. 26 tsunami.
"I thought I would die, and worse than that, I would die all alone," the coconut farmer told The Associated Press this week in his first interview.
"All I came back to each evening was a Bible that I found in the rubble, and I read it every evening and prayed," said Mangal, speaking Nicobarese through a translator.
Mangal, a Christian like many other Nicobarese tribesmen, spoke haltingly as he sprawled on his hospital bed, where he's being treated for stomach ailments and a leg injured by a falling tree. He spoke softly with long pauses, often forgetting facts or staring vacantly.
His story began on Christmas Day, with a big village party, common among the closely knit Nicobarese, the archipelago's largest tribe.
"We had cooked pigs and chicken, and there was lots of alcohol, it was fun," he said. "Everyone was singing."
The next morning, he awoke early for church. "I was having tea and suddenly the house shook, 'pook!' I fell down," he said. "Then I got out and saw the sea - the sea was coming at me like a monster. I started running for my life."
Furious waves swept ashore. People tried to flee, but the sea was faster. Everyone was washed away, including Mangal.
"The water scooped me up," he said. "Then the water picked me again and threw me back to Pillowpanja."
But that miracle had touched no one else. "When I came back, there was no one. No one at all. I looked everywhere," he said. "I couldn't see any living man. But strangely I couldn't see any dead man either."
All he had on was his underwear and a gold-colored ring on his right hand, a cheap copper imitation with a gemlike piece of glass.
It was hard to even recognize his island, which is so small it doesn't appear on most maps. The tiny outpost of forest and coconuts, off the northwest coast of Little Nicobar island, has no electricity or running water.
The tsunami had sheared away miles of forest like a giant lawn mower. Thousands of coconut trees lay toppled. Dozens of straw huts, pyramid-like and mounted on wooden stilts, had simply disappeared.
He looked for his house, which had been about 200 yards from the sea. "But there was no house," he said. "Suddenly, I realized that I was all alone on the whole island. All were dead."
That included his family. Mangal's wife had died years before, and he lived in an extended family, like most Nicobarese, with his cousin, uncle and sister. He had no children.
Nearby lived a woman whom he'd loved his whole life. Even with her gone, he won't give away her name.
"I thought of her," he said of his days alone on the island. "I had wanted to marry her. But she would never say anything. I think she didn't want to marry me."
The nights frightened him. "I was scared of the spirits," he said. "I thought they would kill me."
Although they are largely Christians, most Nicobarese still follow centuries-old practices of spirit worship, animal sacrifice and identifying nature as a living being.
He slept under a tree on a plastic mat, terrified by aftershocks.
"I tried to sleep, I closed my eyes, but the earth would suddenly start shaking so much and I just could not sleep," said Mangal. "How could the earth keep shaking like this forever?"
Slowly, he adapted to his new life. He found a large knife to cut coconuts and chop wood. He made a makeshift bed from planks hacked from a betel tree.
He roamed and slept, then sat by the beach in the evenings and prayed. "Whenever I was hungry, I got a coconut and cut it. I drank the water, and ate the flesh. When it rained, I put my palms together and collected the water, and then drank it all."
By this time, India had launched its biggest ever relief effort. But the archipelago is huge, the islands covered with dense forests.
"I saw planes flying overhead, but they didn't see me," he said.
Days passed, then weeks. No rescuers came. There was only silence.
"It seemed as if all life had been sucked into the sea," he said. "I was sad all the time. I missed my family. And I used to constantly tell myself: `No one will come to rescue me, and I will die right here.'"
He was wrong. One day, four Nicobarese men from nearby Pillowbha island passed by, heading for another island in search of bananas.
Mangal heard their motorboat. "I raced to the shore, took off my underwear and started waving," he said. When they saw him, he slumped to the beach, stunned.
"He didn't say anything, he just kept looking at me," said Michael Solomon, one of his rescuers. "He didn't utter a word. He had no emotion on his face."
The men took him to Campbell Bay, the closest thing to a town in the southern Andamans, and Mangal hobbled into the hospital, severely dehydrated. Doctors marveled at his endurance and mental strength.
Mangal now walks through the hospital and sometimes goes to a nearby Nicobarese relief camp. He's made friends. But his heart isn't here.
He still longs to return to his island - even if he has no idea how he'd survive.
"I want to go home. I want to go back to Pillowpanja," he said.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/10755923.htm?1c