A Boxing Day I'll never forget

Vidhya Kumaranayakam, 36, was on a family holiday when the deadliest tsunami in recorded history hit Sri Lanka’s capital

- KARA O’NEILL

Jostling with my sister Dhanusha, 24, at the hotel bathroom mirror, I tried to apply a final slick of eyeliner before a day’s sightseeing. ‘Come on, girls!’ my mum Bhavani shouted impatiently.

It was Boxing Day 2004, and we were staying in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, where our parents are originally from. They’d moved to Ipswich when Dhanusha was one, and I’d been born three years later. Now, at 21, I was finally getting to experience the culture and see the place where my parents spent so much of their lives.

‘We’re coming!’ Dhanusha and I chimed.

We’d booked a busy day exploring, ending at a wellness retreat up in the hills and, three long hours later, we stopped at an elephant sanctuary before heading to Sigiriya, an ancient rock fortress in the hills. On the drive, Mum and my dad Thangarajah told us stories while we soaked up the views.

But, as we got closer, we could see locals gathered in groups, waving our car down.

‘How can you still be sightseeing after what has happened?’ one stranger lambasted.

We hadn’t been listening to local radio, and our phones were switched off.

‘What’s happened?’ asked Dad, who could speak several of the Sri Lankan languages fluently.

‘There are floods,’ one explained. ‘It’s really bad. They say people are dying.’

‘We didn’t know what horrors awaited us’

It was unusual for Sri Lanka to suffer flooding and, sensing the rising panic of the locals, we abandoned our trip to Sigiriya, heading instead to the wellness retreat, which was on high ground. Only, as we drove, we soon hit queues of hundreds of cars snaking up the mountain roads.

‘Looks like everyone’s had the same idea,’ Dad said.