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A tribute to a lost generation
"A noise of exploding doors
A noise of defences shattered"
Eugene Bay was asleep when the tsunami hit the little guest house in Talpe where he was staying on December 26. Jetlagged after a long journey from Amsterdam, the 52-year-old Dutchman awoke to a strange roar and then swung his feet to the ground only to find water ankle-high, swirling around. A look around gave him the horrifying sight of water spurting from all around the doorframe.

Arousing his sleeping friend, the two looked frantically for ways of escape and managed to clamber onto the roof, through the bathroom. "All I could see was the sea everywhere," he recalls. Then the water receded and Eugene went back down and quite amazingly found there on the floor his friend's contact lens case.

" I tried to grab some of our stuff and then my friend (his sight restored) yelled that another wave was coming." Eugene scrambled up to the roof again and as the wave hit and receded, the two after rescuing the hotel cook made their way with others from the area to the Buddhist temple in Talpe where they were given shelter and a bed for the night.

"Buddhist novices flitting between the damp throng
Unconditionally accepting the invasion of their sanctuary"
Last week, Eugene Bay was in Sri Lanka again, not only with help for the tsunami survivors and the many friends he had made during their six-day ordeal, but also with 'Sri Lankan Tsunami', a book of verse which captures in graphic detail his experiences.

"In the aftermath of this catastrophic event all, who survived, became one. All were shocked and humbled by the supreme and ruthless power of Nature," he writes.
" I am not a professional writer, but try and take the time to see through my eyes what happened to us. It may communicate the mix of hopeless fear, combined with a focused drive to survive. Something I have not seen or read to date in the press."

"I am impotent, I am insignificant
I am now in destiny's hands"
Eugene and his friend Matthieu made their way to Galle and then Colombo with the help of Sri Lankans along the way before taking a flight back to the Netherlands on December 31. But the horror of all that he experienced was burnt in his mind and on the flight back home he wrote and wrote, putting down in verse his images of the tsunami, completing half the book then and there. The balance 50 percent, he says, was written the very next week.

He is not a writer, he repeats, rather he is in the design business being managing partner of a Dutch firm by the name of VBAT. They design corporate identities, internet sites and build brands. But here the images overwhelmed him and the writing was a cathartic process.
"After the tsunami, I tried to tell people about it but they kept interrupting, asking questions. I wanted them to listen," he says.

Eugene has just released 500 copies of his book, a slim volume which he has published himself and hopes that by his retelling he can make people remember the tsunami and the utter devastation it wreaked.
He has sent the book to the Dutch Prime Minister and Queen Beatrix, also to the Sri Lankan President and Prime Minister and hopes that sometime soon, he can find a way to get a Sinhala translation out.

Back in Sri Lanka this time around, there was no thought of a holiday…just a revisiting of places and people that had haunted him. He went back to the temple where they sheltered and was greeted like a long-lost friend by the formerly austere chief priest, he says. Eugene's offers of help were politely turned down, as the Thero said there was no need for such a gesture but on his insistence, the monk asked if he could take the young samaneras on a day outing and he gladly obliged.

Long term he plans to build a dormitory at the temple premises for the young novices.
Deeply concerned by the percieved slowness of the relief effort in some quarters, he stresses that people must not forget how much more still needs to be done.

His next plan is to set up a website where tsunami survivors can post their accounts. So that people will continue to help and not forget.
A dead child can never laugh again, whatever its race.
A dead parent can never keep its family, whatever its religion.
A lost generation can never be retrieved.

-Renuka Sadanandan

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