Winds of change: Women in tsunami-affected areas are rebuilding their lives, and (below) Valarmathi

It’s another soft, velvet night in Keechankuppam. In the distance, the lights of the shantytown flicker like ghostly flames. The sea lolls close by ? the sound of the waves only slightly louder than the murmuring humanity in this fishing hamlet in Nagapattinam. Valarmathi, 31, is worried about the flimsy blue tarpaulin that covers her temporary shelter. She knows she’ll have a hard time fixing it so that it’ll hold when the rain comes. It’s a “man’s job”, but she’ll take care of it. Seven months after her life was torn asunder by the tsunami, Valarmathi feels she can do almost anything at all.

After Silvaraj, 37, her fisherman husband, was swept away by the tsunami in December last year, Valarmathi wallowed in despair. Two months later, she realised that the only way to get out of it was to offer her services to the relief effort.

Since then, Valarmathi has been involved with Sneha, a tsunami relief NGO. “Helping others in grief acted like a balm,” she says. But the balm has come at a price. There are people in her neighbourhood who never fail to remind her that her “husband has just died.” “A woman, especially a widow, going out to work is not well received in a society like ours. But I don’t care about what they say. These days, I even have to deal with corrupt policemen who stop me on the road to demand a share of the relief-supplies. I’ve learnt how to deal with men,” says Valarmathi sternly.

Welcome to the brave new world of women in the tsunami-hit areas of Tamil Nadu. Women for whom the disaster has become a catalyst for change. Says Sunny Jose, who heads the tsunami relief and rehabilitation programme at Action Aid India’s Cuddalore centre, “Before the tsunami came, these women couldn’t think beyond fish vending, and neither were they allowed by their husbands to search for work outside their neighbourhoods.” But today, says Jose, NGOs working in the area are teaching these women such vocational crafts as tailoring, tile-making, shoe-making and the like so that they can become economically independent.

The husbands do not object either. “Roles played by men and women have always been conventional,” says Parandam, a village panchayat elder. “The women ran the house and the men were the breadwinners. But the last six months have been such a struggle for survival that nobody cares if these roles overlap.”

In fact, even when the tsunami relief money was distributed by the government and aid agencies, cheques were often issued in the name of women rather than their menfolk so as to ensure that men didn’t fritter away the money on alcohol. “All this is contributing to a feeling of empowerment among the women folk,” says Jose.

Nineteen-year-old Sudha, also from Keechankuppam, is taking a six-month vocational training in shoe-making. Initially, her fisherman father and fish vendor mother had reservations about letting her do the training. But now, says Sudha, her father is proud of what she is doing. “There’s more acceptance now for women to engage in work other than fish vending,” says Sudha, who plans to start her own shoe-making business once she completes her training.

Chhaya Datar, the head of the department of women’s studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, opines that for these women, the struggle for survival has triggered their innate urge to be emancipated. “The disaster has disintegrated communities. That’s why the usual norms, which weigh heavily on women, have been eliminated.”

But the change has been slow in coming. Charlotte Blonhammer, a documentationist with Oxfam, says that even in the early days after the tsunami there was a lot of resistance by men in the Naucherpettai village of Cuddalore when it was suggested that women be made collective owners of the boats being distributed in the village. “But people are more open to such ideas now,” she says.

In Alambarai kuppam, along the coast of Idaikazhinadu, a feisty group of women are planning to hold a meeting with their fishermen husbands on the stand they want to take on the Sethusamudram project. The multi-crore project, which will dredge the shallow sea between Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar, could do massive damage to the marine life there. For the fishermen of Rameswaram, it could mean a sharp decline in their catch. Although the coastline along Alambarai won’t be directly affected, the women here are goading their men to express their solidarity with those who will be hard hit by the project.

“In the weeks following the tsunami, these women could barely speak in front of their husbands,” says Rebecca Reena of the Gandhian Unit for Integrated Development and Education (GUIDE), an NGO involved in tsunami relief in Keechankuppam. “They couldn’t even sit on chairs if the men were sitting. But look at them now ? they are sharing the same platform with their menfolk. And when they speak, the men listen.”

Other changes have followed. Stepping out of the village on work is no longer the taboo it once was. “Earlier, even the suggestion of a trip outside the village would mean a severe beating from my husband,” says 31-year-old Sugna. But now, when Sugna goes to the district headquarters with other women to press for more tsunami aid, her husband cooks for the family.

It is a measure of the change that has come about in the lives of these women that the village panchayat is considering inviting them to join it ? something unheard of in this region. “After the tsunami, we realised that their views could be invaluable,” says the Muthuvel, the panchayat head. And his words draw a loud applause from the villagers gathered around him.

There are other tales of women who have transformed themselves post the tsunami. K. Amuduwalli, 20, emaciated and polio-ridden, never thought she could do anything worthwhile. When the tsunami came, she saved the lives of her nephews despite her disability. “I ran the fastest that day,” she reminisces. It instilled a feeling of self-belief in her. She began working with an NGO as a psycho-social counsellor for the disabled who were affected by the tsunami. Her father, a fisherman, hasn’t recovered from his tsunami trauma and has been at home ever since. Today, Amuduwalli supports her family of three. “People who used to look down upon me now regard me with awe,” she beams.

This feeling of empowerment is what has made new persons out of so many women in the tsunami-hit areas of Tamil Nadu. And they know they are part of a brave collective effort.

“Before the tsunami, we’d be involved in individual fish-catching,” says Dhanalaxmi, president of the women’s Self Help Group. “We were by ourselves. Now, we’ve divided ourselves in groups of 10 women each, depending on the nature of the job. No one troubles us when we’re together.”

Will their newfound freedom last, though? Will these women go from strength to strength or will they relinquish much of their hard-won freedom when the dust settles and survival is not such a terrible ordeal anymore? “Freedom is a tricky thing,” says Oxfam’s Blonhammer. “When one tastes it, it isn’t easy to let go.”