A part of the mangrove forest that saved T.S. Petai village from the tsunami. Picture by Jeeva

Cuddalore, Dec. 19: As village after village was being swept away when the tsunami struck the Tamil Nadu coast last year, a tiny hamlet stood on, defiant.

Not a single house was razed in T.S. Pettai, a remote fishing village in Cuddalore district, thanks to a mangrove forest that shielded it against the sea’s fury.

Located 13 km from the temple town of Chidambaram, T.S. Pettai recorded only one death ? of a man who was grazing cattle when the waves crashed.

“None of our houses was damaged,” said Gunasekaran, a fisherman. “Because of the natural shelter provided by the mangrove forest on the outer fringes, the water did not enter our huts.”

A small distance away, Pillumedu, an islet with no protection, lost everything.

For the 950-odd villagers, there cannot be a greater god than the forest. “If not for it, our entire village, which is quite close to the sea, would have been wiped away,” said Mathivathanai, the panchayat president of T.S. Pettai.

She added that 25 fishermen who had gone out to sea before the tsunami struck returned safely.

The rare casualties here were some boats and crops. “The sea water had gushed in through a stretch devoid of mangrove plantations and damaged our boats and crops,” Mathivathanai said.

Two international NGOs ? Creed and the Germany-based IGSS ? pitched in to replace the boats.

Sellapandi, a fisherman, recalled seeing a “tall ferocious black column of water approaching”. But the mangroves helped to beat down the force of the waves, he said.

The mangroves grow very fast in the salty backwaters, which is their natural home, the fisherman added.

Fresh planting of mangrove saplings in the uncovered stretches is underway.

The villagers, who still cannot stop thanking their lucky stars, have one complaint. “We badly need a motorable road to our village, but it has been held up for a long time because of a 30-year-old litigation by a local landlord who refuses to part with some portions of his land for the road,” said Sellapandi.

After scripting such a miraculous story of survival, a road is not an impossible dream.