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<\/a>India was hard hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which flattened coastal communities and claimed an estimated 228,000 lives across more than a dozen countries. Photo by Arko Datta\/Reuters\/Alamy Stock Photo<\/p><\/div>\n
By 11:00 a.m., a rapid emergency rescue mission had been organized along the badly hit areas; 412 camps in Tamil Nadu and another 48 camps along the coastal belt of Puducherry popped up to shelter more than 350,000 people. It took Prajapati 15 minutes by bike to reach one of the camps, at Auroville Beach. Under a sprawling tent by the road, complete chaos reigned.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone was on the streets; disoriented, scared, and anxious,\u201d she says. Most of the people affected were from fishing villages near Auroville, and they were wet and exhausted. In a matter of minutes, everything they\u2019d owned had been snatched from them. Many had lost their homes. Others had to deal with a more irreparable loss as bodies washed up on shore, or they waited, generally in vain, for missing loved ones to appear. The cries of wailing children rent the air. Prajapati joined the volunteers who were attempting to comfort and gather the survivors.<\/p>\n
Later in the day, on makeshift stoves in the corner of the tent, volunteers were trying to cook a meal for the survivors. \u201cIt was so chaotic that no one was able to focus,\u201d says Prajapati. One of the organizers asked her to calm the children. \u201cI had to think fast,\u201d she says. Around her were 50 children ranging from ages five to 10 years. \u201cWould you like to make dolls?\u201d she asked a group of them. Prajapati\u2019s design studio, Upasana<\/a>, was one of the earliest labels in India to champion sustainable fashion for women, specializing in garments made from organic cottons and handloom weaves. A couple of years before, an intern at Upasana named Prema Viswanathan was researching an upcycling project as part of her diploma in fashion design. She was playing around with leftover cloth and had deftly designed a few little dolls. This activity, Prajapati thought, would be a great way to keep the younger children busy. She made a frantic call to her office: \u201cSend bright colors, plenty of needles, and scissors,\u201d she instructed. When the materials arrived, Prajapati recruited the nearest volunteers and assigned six kids to each of them. Soon, a doll-making workshop based on one of Viswanathan\u2019s prototypes was underway, and silence descended on the camp. It was remarkable how the children focused on their task, says Prajapati. It brought much-needed calm to a panic-stricken day.<\/p>\n The immense loss and sense of purposelessness fashion designer Uma Prajapati noted among villagers who had been impacted by the tsunami inspired her to launch a doll-making initiative. Photo courtesy of Upasana, Auroville<\/p><\/div>\n When she returned the next morning, the children had finished breakfast and were waiting for her. They wanted to make more dolls, they said. This time, their mothers joined them. Food was provided at the camps, and the women, the wives of fishers, felt purposeless. They began learning how to make the little dolls, as well.<\/p>\n The doll Prajapati showed them was particularly simple to craft and didn\u2019t require any specialized needlework. With no arms or legs, the figure, just two to three centimeters long, is dominated by the solid colors of a tunic\u2014a sheath of bright cloth\u2014attached directly to the rounded face. Her eyes, two dark slashes, are framed by a full head of hair. A slash of thread represents the nose and mouth, and the doll looks like she\u2019s deep in slumber.<\/p>\n The work consumed the doll makers\u2019 time and minds, while linking them to a global tradition. People have been crafting dolls for thousands of years, first for religious and spiritual significance and eventually as toys. Today, many art therapists recognize dolls and doll making as powerful therapeutic tools. In a blog post, art therapist Ceara Genovesi wrote of dolls being \u201csymbolic vessels and transitional objects. Dolls create a holding space for an individual\u2019s emotions.\u201d Wrapping and stitching are recognized by therapists and crafters as calming and meditative practices, providing space for self-reflection.<\/p>\n Months after that first doll-making workshop, Prajapati\u2019s business partner, Manoj Pavitran, would name the doll Tsunamika\u2014the daughter of the tsunami, born from the tragic churning of the ocean. The name came to him in meditation. \u201cIt felt like we\u2019d received the name like a gift,\u201d says Prajapati.<\/p>\n On the third day after the tsunami, fisherfolk tried to quell their fear of aftershocks and returned to their villages to begin cleaning, repairing, and rebuilding. Prajapati would visit regularly after work and see women staring vacantly into the distance, overcome with shock and grief.<\/p>\n She asked women she\u2019d met at the relief camp if they would like to resume making dolls. They and many others from multiple villages embraced the opportunity, and soon the number of doll makers swelled to 600, eventually peaking at over 1,000. One of them was Mahalakshmi Natarajan, then 25 and living in the village of Bommayapalayam with her husband and two young sons. Most of her belongings had washed away, she says, but the loss of personal possessions was the least upsetting impact of the tsunami. \u201cPeople had sounded the warning about the ocean looking strange that day. I rushed out of my home to see what they were talking about. When I saw the giant waves, I just grabbed my children and fled.\u201d She didn\u2019t have a chance to salvage anything or to help anyone else. Six people died in her village, including a 16-year-old girl she had been speaking with only moments before the tragedy. The girl had walked away after the conversation, and Natarajan had looked back just as the wave overtook her in the distance. \u201cShe was washed away, right in front of my eyes,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Villagers pick through the rubble of their home in Cuddalore, within the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, after the 2004 tsunami. Photo by Arko Datta\/Reuters\/Alamy Stock Photo<\/p><\/div>\n After the tragedy, people in her village were paralyzed with fear; many were reluctant to go out to fish. The doll-making workshop seemed like a godsend, says Natarajan.<\/p>\n In the early days, staff from Upasana would come to each of six villages badly affected by the tsunami to teach a doll-making workshop that spanned half a day. Eventually the villagers took over teaching one another. Each village elected two coordinators responsible for overseeing the quality of the work and for reporting to one another and to Upasana on their village\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n The dolls were never made for commercial gain, says Prajapati: the priority \u201cwas always the emotional value, the healing from grief and trauma that it brought.\u201d The doll project is part of a concept known as the gift economy\u2014Tsunamikas are shared freely, and those who receive them are not obligated to support the initiative, though many do. Yet, Prajapati wanted to compensate the women for their labor, time, and skill. Early on in the effort, she managed to arrange funding through a program called the Auroville Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation Project and from Concern India Foundation, a charitable trust that helps disadvantaged people become self-reliant. She promised that in return, the villagers could make one million dolls.<\/p>\n For many of the doll makers, the compensation they received was their first independent income, and it came during the most desperate financial crunch of their lives. They received a small payment, somewhere between US $13 and $57 a month\u2014an average minimum wage at the time\u2014and it was welcome, says Natarajan.<\/p>\n A group of women who embraced the doll-making project in its early days pose with a few of their Tsunamikas. Photo courtesy of Upasana, Auroville<\/p><\/div>\n Prema Shankar, a 72-year-old Tsunamika team leader, who lives in a village west of Auroville, says her family didn\u2019t suffer much loss in the tsunami and she didn\u2019t really need the extra income because her husband\u2019s job at a hostel was secure, but she saw how the dolls helped others in the community. She was skilled in embroidery and could teach the other women, supervising their stitching. \u201cEvery year, we celebrate the anniversary of the Tsunamika, because the doll wasn\u2019t just an alternative means of livelihood. It helped many of us find a sense of purpose and a way out of tragedy,\u201d she says. Staying focused on a target in those early months helped. \u201cAs a team leader, I\u2019d wake up thinking we\u2019d need to craft 200 dolls today.\u201d<\/p>\n In the months after the tsunami, each of the six villages made around 150,000 dolls every month, she estimates. \u201cOn days that I can\u2019t sleep, I\u2019ve crafted the Tsunamika in the middle of the night, while listening to old songs,\u201d Shankar says.<\/p>\n The doll makers continued to use scraps donated by Upasana and other textile manufacturers from around Auroville, and occasionally they bought waste from local tailors. \u201cWe never ran out of fabric,\u201d says Prajapati. \u201cOnce, when we couldn\u2019t find white material for the head, we used colored fabrics and called the colored faces of the doll the \u2018Holi edition\u2019\u201d (referring to a spring festival in India where brightly colored powders are smeared on faces and clothes).<\/p>\n Looking back, Prajapati realizes that committing the doll makers to creating one million dolls was a rather wild idea, especially since she was working with women who were learning how to sew for the first time in their lives\u2014yet, she believed they could do it. They fulfilled the promise. \u201cAnd yet, no one wanted to stop,\u201d says Prajapati. \u201cThe project had grown into a movement, bigger than I\u2019d ever imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n The dolls were given away to NGOs and local business organizations and distributed at events held in shopping malls, public parks, and schools. As more people shared the dolls, the story of the hardships faced by the fishing communities after the tsunami spread. By then, international aid organizations had donated money to rebuild flattened boats and homes<\/a>, but the Tsunamika project helped people understand and empathize with the long-term emotional trauma experienced by the coastal villagers. \u201cI\u2019ve seen people who\u2019ve received the Tsunamika change; she touched lives far beyond the borders of the fishing villages in which she was birthed,\u201d says Prajapati.<\/p>\n Doll makers use scraps of whatever fabric is available to fashion their diminutive Tsunamikas. Photo courtesy of Upasana, Auroville<\/p><\/div>\n This was evident when, in the winter of 2007, Prajapati visited Bilbao, Spain, to speak at an event organized by Lur Gozoa<\/a>, one of many NGOs that donated to the Tsunamika project over the years after the initial funding ran out. Lur Guzoa raised funds locally and in return received dolls to distribute in its community.<\/p>\n After the event was over, during dinner, Prajapati met a bartender who asked her an unusual question. \u201cAre you Tsunamika\u2019s mother?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n His polo-necked shirt was peeking out of his woolen sweater, and attached to the collar was a Tsunamika. He had heard about the effort through Lur Gozoa and had dolls available at his bar for donations, which he collected in an empty beer pitcher. \u201cHe\u2019d just contributed 600 euros [US $725] to the cause,\u201d says Prajapati. \u201cHe said he\u2019d run out of his stock of dolls already and that I\u2019d need to send him more. I was very touched.\u201d<\/p>\n The incident brought home to her how cultural differences could be overcome when people came together to deal with adversity.<\/p>\n In 2011, when a tsunami swept through mainland Japan, killing nearly 20,000 people, Upasana reached out to Peace Boat<\/a>, an NGO based in Japan that uses international voyages by ship to promote peace, human rights, and sustainability. Prajapati and her staff hoped the NGO could help them deliver Tsunamikas to the affected communities in Japan.<\/p>\n Following the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan, Peace Boat volunteers present survivors in the city of Ishinomaki with Tsunamika dolls and cards explaining the project. Photo courtesy of Peace Boat<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cWe transported 100,000 of the dolls from Kochi [where Peace Boat was docked in India] to Japan,\u201d says Meri Joyce, a Peace Boat coordinator. The majority were distributed to community members in Ishinomaki, one of the cities hard hit by the disaster and where Peace Boat\u2019s relief activities were centered. Peace Boat workers handed out the dolls to people who came to receive meals at soup kitchens or who were living in evacuation shelters and temporary housing. \u201cThey were received extremely warmly,\u201d says Joyce. \u201cComing as a gift from someone else who understood the severity of the impact and the pain of the sorrow following the disaster meant a great deal.\u201d<\/p>\n During her visits to the fishing villages over the years, Prajapati became keenly aware of other issues that were affecting them. The doll had quickly grown into a powerful symbol of hope, and she wondered how she could employ it to also raise awareness about ocean conservation. In 2008, Upasana produced two e-books featuring Tsunamika as the central character. Tsunamika Meets Friends<\/em><\/a> tells the doll\u2019s origin story, while Tsunamika: Ocean, my Home<\/em><\/a> addresses marine pollution. An endorsement of the Tsunamika project by UNESCO that year helped the e-books gain a wider audience, and they were eventually translated from English into German, Russian, Danish, French, and Tamil.<\/p>\n A spread from Tsunamika: Ocean, my Home<\/em>, one of two e-books produced by Prajapati\u2019s company, Upasana, about the character Tsunamika. Illustration courtesy of Upasana<\/p><\/div>\n On Tsunamika\u2019s 10th birthday in January 2014, Upasana planned several events in the fishing communities to celebrate. A small visiting Finnish theater group performed what art director Liisa Isotalo calls \u201ca lyrical lament.\u201d It showed Tsunamika grief stricken at the damage humans have inflicted on the oceans, and was performed for hundreds of children in and around Auroville, as well as at schools and festivals in Finland.<\/p>\n Over the years, local NGOs have used the Tsunamika as a means to deliver their own messages about protecting the environment. \u201cEvery day, we grapple with how human actions impact the environment,\u201d says Sunaina Mandeen, cofounder of Pondy Citizen\u2019s Action Network (PondyCAN), a nonprofit in Puducherry addressing large-scale erosion<\/a> of local beaches due to development. In Tsunamika, the group saw a powerful symbol that could help people better understand conservation messages. PondyCAN visited local schools with a three-meter-tall Tsunamika. \u201cWe told children how she was concerned about the health and well-being of the sea and of all the creatures that inhabit it,\u201d Mandeen says.<\/p>\n The emotional appeal the doll had in the fishing communities lent a deeper impact to these messages. After all, the Tsunamika had been a constant presence in villagers\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n This is one example of a Karuna doll, created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Karuna is similar in design to Tsunamika, but varies significantly between artists. Photo courtesy of Upasana, Auroville<\/p><\/div>\n The number of dolls the villagers make has ebbed and flowed over the years, but there have always been women working on the project, says Prajapati. Today, around 60 women are involved, including Shankar and Natarajan, who still enjoy the work 17 years later, though they produce fewer than they once did. Now, in addition to Tsunamika, they are crafting her \u201csister\u201d\u2014Karuna, whose name means compassion. The movement was launched in 2020 by Creative Dignity<\/a>, a volunteer-driven collective powered by designers and craft councils across India to help artisans. Prajapati is a key volunteer and helped launch the campaign. Women from numerous states across India are now making the Karuna doll to provide a sense of strength and hope during the COVID-19 pandemic. It\u2019s possible that Karuna may someday eclipse Tsunamika, though at the moment, she\u2019s not as well known.<\/p>\n In her village, Shankar is attempting to involve a younger generation in crafting, though she admits it\u2019s an uphill task. \u201cI try because it instills a sense of teamwork,\u201d she says. \u201cI tell the kids, I\u2019ll make her face and you do the dress\u2014we\u2019ll work on her together. But this generation has no memory of the tsunami, and they don\u2019t immediately understand the symbolic nature of the Tsunamika\u2014how she came at a time when conquering adversity and moving on meant survival.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fashion designer Uma Prajapati was sifting through emails at her office desk one sun-streaked afternoon in 2005, when a particular note caught her eye. It was from a young woman in Mumbai, India, who described her struggles with depression. At <\/p>\n<\/a>
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