While the killer waves left countless orphans, there were also several mothers who lost their children. Sterilised or too old to conceive, a few were abandoned by their husbands. Some went into depression and even committed suicide. Others attempted recanalisation to try to conceive.
Sang MIO - INDIA: The southern town of Nagapattinam was one of the places in India worst hit by the Asian tsunami in 2004. Out of the nearly 16,000 casualties in the country, more than 6,000 were from Nagapattinam, a town of fishing families.
While the killer waves left countless orphans, there were also several mothers who lost their children. Sterilised or too old to conceive, a few were abandoned by their husbands. Some went into depression and even committed suicide. Others attempted recanalisation to try to conceive.
Harimalai lost all her four children to the tsunami. Having opted for government-sponsored sterilisation before the tragedy, she could not conceive again. But desperate to have children, she went under the knife to undergo recanalisation to rejoin her fallopian tubes.
She said: "For three months I did not talk to my husband. I had lost my children and I just kept crying. I would not eat food. I stopped applying any kind of make-up, I even stopped combing my hair. It's only after my child was born that I started putting a bindi on my forehead and putting flowers in my hair."
But out of the 67 recorded cases who underwent recanalisation, 54 could not conceive. Vasantha is one of them. "Now it is going to be 10 years. Whenever I go near my old home, I only cry, cry and cry. There is no peace in my mind because I lost three of my children to the tsunami. Even if I get another child, still I can never forget them."
While some women are happy being mothers again, others like Vasantha are having to come to terms with lives without children.
Source : Indian mothers try to conceive after losing children to 2004 tsunami
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