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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Friday, January 7, 2005

Kaua'i monks grieve over orphan deaths

 •  Bank offers to match donations
Photo gallery: Tsunami relief operations
See pictures from relief efforts of the USS Abraham Lincoln,
an aircraft carrier stationed off Sumatra.

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau

WAILUA, Kaua'i — Sri Lankan orphans with ties to a Hindu monastery on Kaua'i ran from the onrushing water of the Dec. 26 tsunami, but many did not run fast enough.

Before the tsunami, orphans worshipped at the Thirunavukkarasu Nayanar Gurukulam orphanage on the east coast of Sri Lanka.

Photo courtesy Saiva Siddhantha Church

Three of the boys were confirmed dead and 17 are missing. The orphanage director, who was running with them, remains hospitalized with injuries.

The buildings at the Thirunavukkarasu Nayanar Gurukulam orphanage, near Thirukovil, were destroyed by what was described as a 30-foot wave. The orphanage served 75 boys, ages 6 to 16. Most are Tamil Hindus whose parents were killed in ethnic battles that have torn Sri Lanka.

More than 30,000 people are confirmed dead and more than 3,000 reported missing in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, an island nation off the southeast tip of India.

Only the open water of the Indian Ocean separates the island from the site of the earthquake off Sumatra that triggered the killer tsunami, which smashed low-lying villages, coastal roads and bridges along the entire eastern coastline of Sri Lanka. The orphanage sat on a heavily vegetated, low, sandy coast near the middle of the island's eastern side, directly in the tsunami's path.

WHERE TO SEND AID TO VICTIMS

• Sri Lanka Refugee Relief Fund
107 Kaholalele Road
Kapa'a, HI 96746.

Web site

Orange-robed Hindu monks at the Saiva Siddhantha Church monastery in the Wailua uplands of Kaua'i have a special link to the orphanage. They have been one of its primary benefactors in recent years and are raising money to help the orphanage build a new home.

Their frustration, said senior monk Paramacharya Palaniswami, is that communication is virtually nonexistent along the devastated coast. What little contact they have is passed through several international sources.

"It is almost impossible to get in touch with people there right now," Palaniswami said. "The orphans were seen running, with Kannan," the nickname of orphanage director Tiru B. Chandreswaran, a former orphan who returned to oversee the facility after he married.

Paramacharya Palaniswami

Yogi Japendranatha
Three of the boys drowned, Palaniswami said. A report received this week said 17 more are missing. The known surviving boys are staying with families that live inland, he said.

The orphanage was started in 1984. Its spiritual leader was the late Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, familiarly known as Gurudeva, a Sri Lankan-trained Hindu priest who moved to Kaua'i and founded the Wailua monastery in 1970. He died in 2001. The monastery's Hindu Heritage Endowment helps support the Sri Lankan facility and six other orphanages.

Palaniswami said the orphanage is operated less as an orphanage than as an ashram, or spiritual center. The boys study religious teachings, yoga and meditation, and they themselves teach religion in the surrounding communities.

The Wailua Hindu monks have not heard of the fate of another Sri Lanka monastery they assist, the Swami Vipulananta Children's Home in Akkaraipattu, Palaniswami said.

The Wailua monastery has been touched by the tsunami in other ways. Its spiritual leader, Satguru Bodhinatha, was teaching a weeklong seminar on the Malaysian coast, and several dozen students were walking on the beach nearby when water suddenly rose from ankle to shoulder level.

The water was not turbulent, perhaps because that section of Malaysia was protected from the direct path of the tsunami by the bulk of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, said Yogi Japendranatha, a Wailua monk who was assisting Bodhinatha.

"It happened in seconds. They described an undertow, but they were able to struggle to safety," Japendranatha said.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.