It was an unforgettable Christmas Day for Londoner Ani Naqvi in 2004. She’d gone to Sri Lanka to spend the holiday with her best friend who had just opened the Galaxy Lounge Guesthouse in Arugam Bay and they spent the 25th eating, drinking and socialising with guests.
On Christmas night, Ani – who was 33 at the time – stayed up late playing cards with friends.
‘We were on a beautiful paradise island, everyone was being super friendly and it was a great time,’ she remembers.
The next morning she was still asleep at around 8.30am when her door flung open and water stormed in flooding her cabana. In a split second, the water was thundering in from all the doors and windows and Ani was underwater and fighting for her life.
‘It didn’t make any sense whatsoever. It was in the time before we even knew about tsunamis. My first thought was that it was maybe a freak full moon wave.
‘I was completely disorientated. I had no idea what had hit. I didn’t see what had happened, I’d gone from being fast asleep and then alarmed, then underwater and drowning’, the executive coach and mentor says.
The pitch black water sucked all the light out and Ani was thrown into complete darkness in the maelstrom.
‘The water was so powerful you’re like a grain of rice in a washing machine,’ she remembers. ‘You’re tumbling around and you have no clue what is going on’.
Meanwhile, all the furniture in the room became missiles, leaving Ani black and bleeding, with no idea which way was out. The force of the water ripped off all her pyjamas and jewellery, leaving just her shirt which swamped her head, blinding her further as her eardrums burst.
She remembers grappling with the fact that she was going to die before she’d fallen in love or had a family as she tumbled helplessly in the water.
‘I’d had my dream job, bought my own house… I had what is considered the trappings of success, but in those moments, none of that mattered.
‘It was horrifying. But your survival instinct kicks and I remember this voice telling me. “Remember this moment, because you don’t want to die.”’
Ani was among the first people to be struck by the Boxing Day Indian Ocean tsunami twenty years ago when a series of huge waves triggered by an earthquake killed more than 230,000 people across 14 countries.
‘The sound was deafening, I was blinded and all of my senses were on high alert. I was swallowing salty, dirty sea water and my throat was burning. It was just pure terror, that I was going to die in this violent way and I was fighting like a lion to stay alive.’
As Ani’s concrete hut began to disintegrate and shards of light streamed through.
‘I realised that I was upside down with my head towards the floor. I was just tumbling round, being buffeted from one place to another. Every now and then I would surface for a gasp of air before going under again. I had no power or control.
‘Then I was washed inland with the tsunami, travelling at hundreds of miles an hour, and could see all the bodies in the water next to me and I was still not computing. It was just unbelievable.’
As the water powered her towards the jungle, Ani became trapped faced down, under what she assumed was a fallen building.
‘I had the experience of the tunnel, the white light,’ she remembers. ‘My grandfather was there, and other relatives. They were beaming down with this warm peace and love. And I felt this sense of calm in a way that you don’t experience in normal life. You’re no longer in the suffering and pain, you’re in this very different state.’
Images and memories of loved ones and memorable events flashed up before her, from her childhood through to the present, like snapshots. Then a voice came to her again, reminding her of a palm reading she’d had years before, that told her she’d have a near death experience, but she would survive it.
‘For a moment, my soul left the body and I could see myself overhead, Ani adds. ‘In that moment, the tsunami shook whatever was holding me down face first and I resurfaced once more and was once again getting pushed inland. Then I got lucky, and was thrown into the path of the tree, which saved my life.’
Winded and shocked, Ani clung onto the tree for dear life as the water thundered past her and above her, before being sucked back out to sea.
Spotting her friends, Ani struggled across a floor of broken glass, nails and chicken wire towards them. By the time she made it over, her friend didn’t recognise her because her face was bruised and bleeding and she was covered in mud and debris. Half of her face had been scraped away after she’d become trapped under the building, she explains.
As the three were reunited, people started shouting ‘water water water’ and they could see another wave coming their way, so ran inland.
A mound appeared out of nowhere that was high enough to be safe and from I could see everybody running – even the couple that were in the hut next to mine that I’d been playing cards with.
They were running and then they just disappeared under the wave…’
Ani took a sarong from a nearby washing line to cover herself and the group headed for higher ground, where she and other survivors stood shellshocked as local people retrieved body after body on makeshift stretchers and the magnitude of the disaster started to take hold.
‘You could see the body count piling up. There was a sense of hopelessness. It was really upsetting to see that much death and destruction in such a short amount of time.
When someone arrived in a jeep, Ani started to take control of the situation. She turned on the radio and heard that an earthquake had taken place and triggered a tsunami across Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Realising it was a much wider disaster than she had first thought, Ani realised she’d have to work to get rescued.
‘We were stranded on this peninsula. The bridge that connected us to mainland had been taken out and we were surrounded by a crocodile filled lagoon, the killer tsunami and leopard filled jungle on the other side. We were in no man’s land.’
As she was reporting back what she could hear on the radio, survivors started looking to Ani to lead them.
‘I don’t know how but I managed to remember the number of the BBC switchboard from when I’d worked there five years before as a producer. I called and explained that they need to get hold of the British High Commission to get us airlifted to safety.’
Within an hour, the deputy high commissioner told Ani that although they would be rescued, it wouldn’t be until it got light the next day.
Meanwhile, those around Ani were shouting that they needed food and they didn’t have any water because the wells were contaminated with dead bodies. Ani administered what first aid she could with basic supplies like painkillers and bandages.
‘Every time I treated someone, they would recoil in shock, as they were horrified by my face. I couldn’t see it but it must have been very bloody and bruised.’
As the afternoon turned to night, the Army bought food and water. The survivors entered a private house and took blankets and sheets to put on the floor, while Ani took a sarong from a dressing line to cover herself. The army wanted to move the camp to higher ground, but because this would force them to head first towards the sea front, panic spread, and at one point she had two middle aged adults clinging to either arm and a six year old clamped to her, pleading her for help.
As the helicopters arrived in the early hours, Ani ushered on the youngest, oldest, the injured and most distressed aboard. She saw everyone airlifted safely until she took the final chopper at around 4pm.
However, the relief of being lifted into the air came with further trauma.
‘You just survived near death, then you’re in a chopper with no doors and you’re clinging on for dear life,’ Ani remembers. ‘From the sky I could see the scale of the disaster. It was flat as a pancake for miles inland.’
Ani was taken to a small town called Ampara where she received treatment for her cuts and bruises and then flew home on New Year’s Day.
‘I was in shock the whole time. Everything had been destroyed in Sri Lanka but at home, everything was just normal. The vases were in the same place. The furniture and the cushions – everything was neat and ordered. I didn’t get it.’
Back in the UK, Ani struggled. Her wounds were infected, she had a nasty bug from drinking dirty water and she would scream at night. ‘I would wake drowning over and over’, she remembers. Her flatmate took her to the GP who referred her to a trauma specialists, where Ani was diagnosed with PTSD.
For weeks she barely slept and it was months before she could go back to work. Two decades on, sudden loud noises still upset her.
She also suffered from survivors’ guilt. ‘When you know that a quarter of a million people have died, and then you survive… I felt unworthy. I didn’t have a family, I wasn’t married. I was left with this sense that I had to make my life mean something, because I’d been given a second chance when other people haven’t.’
It was only when Ani was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, that she realised she hadn’t dealt with the underlying trauma.
‘I met my husband Andreas at the time, who is a yoga and mediation teacher, and he was instrumental in my healing journey,’ she explains.
Having been in remission since 2014, Ani now works as a transformation expert, helping people shift their mindset, move from surviving to thriving brain and giving them the support to help them cope with their own personal trauma.
20% of her profits go to charities and she aims to transform the lives of 250,000 people in honour of those that died.
As she talks about wanting to make sure they are not forgotten, she can’t help but get emotional.
‘I want to have a positive impact and impact as many people’s lives as I can,’ she says. ‘You can have terrible adversity; tsunami, cancer, and survive it. I’ve survived and used it to thrive and to find my purpose and mission and help other people.
If I can recover, I hope that will inspire other people to know they can too.’
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Claie.Wilson@metro.co.uk
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