Life Before

V. Akka joined a little late on the first day of interviews. She is in her mid-thirties. Her face is handsome and strong; her biceps and forearms adorned with tattoos. She comments that her sisters are older than she, but people always think it's the other way around. V. Akka can neither read nor write. She is one of two illiterate women selected for a leadership position in this project.

She is her husband’s second wife. The first wife had three children. One committed suicide. V. Akka had two children herself, a girl and a boy. The girl died in the tsunami. Unlike other women in our interview group, her husband encouraged her to work – if only so he would have more money to drink. The work she did before the tsunami was extremely hard. She collected shells (to sell to a middleman for Rs. 100-150 (around $3) per day) and fetched prawns. She even fished on a catamaran.

To collect shells, she said, there were two methods. Sometimes she would stand in the sea and drive iron rods into the sand, to which she would attach a net. She lifted up her leg and showed us scars from misguided attempts to control the sharp metal amidst the current. Otherwise, she would stand with other women at the point where the waves break in the ocean, holding a special net under the water to catch the shells. Often times the waves would submerge the women completely.

Fetching prawns is done by hand, at night. I asked V. Akka if she ever got scared, standing out in the ocean at night. She cocked her head a little and looked at me out of the side of her right eye. The right side of her mouth turned upward, slightly. Yes, she said – but her answer was not what I expected. She and the other women with whom she worked, standing in the ocean at night, were scared of ghosts.