IAF officer saves wife, loses baby

KOLKATA: Tarun Sarkar and Debojit Das, both air force officers, are neighbours in Krishnagore. They were neighbours in Car Nicobar too.
Life had treated the friends equally, until Black Sunday. Both families were caught in the killer waves that wiped out their base and killed scores of their colleagues. But while Sarkar and his family had a miraculous escape, Das lost his darling son, all of one year, to the tsunami.
The waves tore Baby Rudra out of his mother''s grip. Then, they dragged her in too. The IAF officer made a desperate lunge but managed to reach only his wife. The baby did not stand a chance. The two families returned to Kolkata on Thursday morning.
The gloom over the baby''s death enveloped both. Sarkar, his wife Susmita and threeyear-old daughter Trisha were one of the few families who managed to escape Sunday''s catastrophe. Everything they owned was washed away in the surging waves but their lives were spared.
Their families in Bengal had no clue to their whereabouts till the evening of December 27 when a call confirmed that the trio were alive. "We had lost all hope of seeing them again," said Jyotsna Chatterjee, a relative of the Sarkars. "It was nothing short of a miracle," remarked Neeta Chatterjee Pal, another relative.
On the other hand, it was sheer and unrelenting heartbreak for Debojit Das, an IAF doctor, and wife Pappa. "As the water surged into their quarters, Pappa desperately clutched her baby but they were both swept away. Luckily, Debojit managed to grab his wife," said Ankur Adhikari, Pappa''s relative.
Rudradeep was a premature baby and had to wage grim battle for survival his first few hours at Command Hospital in Kolkata.
Only on December 8, his parents had celebrated his first birthday with great fanfare. The day before the tragedy struck the family had been out on a picnic; was a beautiful day Ankur told TOI. Putul Adhikari, the baby''s grandmother, heartbroken.