Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health, Velankanni — 15th June 2003
Friday the 13th of June 2003 — I landed at Madras airport. I wasn't sure about my actions, but I let it go with the wind.
Saturday the 14th — we met. We were never strangers. The phone lines had carried our words long before. By Sunday the 15th, the heart had already decided.
The plan was Mumbai — but life had other arrangements. Velankanni happened instead, in top secret, with her mother and two uncles standing quietly beside her. Before Our Lady of Good Health, we made our choice.
Some called it reckless. Some objected. But what was written in the heart could not be undone by anyone standing outside it.
The Tsunami came in December 2004 — the real one, the one that shook coastlines across the world. But there had already been smaller ones before it, and there would be more after. There always are. Yet here we are, in 2026, still standing.
There may be more tsunamis ahead —
but we have always known how to find our way back."
I landed not knowing who I was to meet.
The wind took my hand, said let it go —
And the morning of the fourteenth, there you were.
By the fifteenth the heart had already decided —
What God had written, no one could divide it.
Your mother stood beside you, quiet and bold.
No grand announcement, no fanfare, no crowd —
Just two souls before God, heads quietly bowed.
The sea said nothing — it simply blessed.
Then December 2004 came with wave upon wave,
But we had already chosen what we chose to save.
Of rebuilding quietly after each fall.
I still remember the wind that day in Madras —
and let it pass.