How Meghana Found The Man Who Rescued Her

Meghana Rajsekhar survived the tsunami and was rescued by an unknown tribal man. 14 years later she tracked him down to say thank you.

Meghana Rajsekhar saw Basil climb a coconut tree which brought back memories from 14 years ago.

In 2004, he had saved her life after the sea had washed her ashore on the southern tip of Car Nicobar that had been cut off from the rest of the island by the tsunami on December 26.

Meghana was 12. She was asleep in the night suit given to her as a Christmas present by her father Squadron Leader P V Rajsekhar and mother when the tsunami swallowed the air base, taking her parents and brother in its violent spate.

111 officers, men and support staff lost their lives at the Car Nicobar air base.

Meghana miraculously survived by clinging on to her bedroom door surrounded by raging waves and deadly snakes.

The following day, the waves threw her back ashore. The frightened, disoriented child spent two days walking up and down the strip of land.

There was no one in sight.

She unsuccessfully tried to catch the attention of passing aircraft landing and taking off on the air strip by waving flags made out of clothes found in a washed-away suitcase belonging to a newly-wed couple.

But no one saw her.

Then she spotted a man climbing a coconut tree on a cliff and ran towards him.

He saw her too and took her to what remained of the destroyed Indian Air Force base in Car Nicobar that had borne the full brunt of the tsunami and taken the life of her parents and brother.

For years, Meghana did not know her rescuer's name and reached out to an air force officer, a friend of her father to help locate him. In 2018, she returned to the island with the main purpose of meeting him and say thank you.

The air force station in Car Nicobar located him and helped her plan the meeting.

Yet it took her a week after landing there to feel brave enough to travel the short distance from her accommodation at the air force station to the tribal village of Kakana.

"I remembered his face the moment I saw him, and I told him 'I am just going to sit by your feet and look at you because I don't want to forget your face ever again'," says Meghana, 32, an architect-turned deep sea diver, long distance swimmer and an incredible young woman who has navigated her life through grief admirably.

It has been a long and hard journey for the air force officer's daughter, but she has fought every day, one step at a time.

And it were these forward going steps that had made her take the long flight from Hyderabad to the further most tip of India to meet her saviour -- an unknown aboriginal man who lived in a hut by the sea.

"I was just crying. There was an IAF personnel who had made the first contact with him three months ago, an officer's wife, another liaison officer and people from his family and village, but to me it was just him," says Meghana in a phone conversation from Hyderabad.

Overwhelmed with tears that just did not seem to stop, she noticed that Basil was pointing to his feet and was wearing mismatched slippers.

"I asked him why was he wearing two different slippers and he said he had lost one when he left them outside the church."

"That was the lighter moment of our first meeting."

She had brought gifts like fishing rods, outdoor jackets, snorkels, fins, water boots resistant to snakes etc, things that could improve his daily living.

"I asked him what he needs, and he said a cycle. It was so humbling."

Meghana bought him a cycle and has gone back to meet him and his family many times.

He taught her how to do line fishing, and she cooked for them.

She had come for a few days and went on to stay for three months, meeting Basil and his family regularly.

Last month, she once again got an opportunity to meet him on the 20th remembrance event organised by the armed forces in Car Nicobar.

One of the things Meghana did when she met him this time was to outline his foot on a sheet of paper so that she could buy fins that would help him wade further into the sea to fish.

"He went into the sea every day from 6 am to 4 pm to fish for his family and got very little because the reefs are badly damaged and one has to go further into the water to catch fish."

"I thought the right sized fins would help him catch more fish."

Locating a man whose name she didn't know:

Meghana's search for her rescuer began during a time when she was stricken by a year-long debilitating illness. 'If this is the last thing I do, let me find out the name of my rescuer,' she thought and sought help from the IAF station in Car Nicobar to locate the man.

"Around the same time, he was bitten by a viper and thought he was dying," recalls Meghana who was herself in serious medical condition at that time.

"He told the village captain and his family that he wished he could know something about the girl he rescued -- and a couple of months later we met."

Meghana met Basil and his family regularly during that trip in 2018.

They communicated in broken Hindi and through words, eyes, nods and gestures.

The meeting made her feel better than what she had felt in a long, long time.

"That was the time I started going into the sea. I had more desire to live than any other time in my life and thought I must seek closure."

Those three months revived her health and the nagging problem that had crippled her for 8 months slipped away.

One day she asked Basil what was he doing on the cliff the day he found her?

He said he had come looking for his brother who had been taken by the tsunami.

"Did you find him?" I asked, and he replied, "I never went back because finding you was good enough."

SEE: Meghana Meets Her Saviour's Family

Next week: How a katori of rasam brought back closure