Gasping for air as the raging black water tossed me around like a doll, I believed this was it – my life was ending. Then amid the chaos and terror, I had a moment of complete clarity.
‘Remember this moment, you do not want to die,’ a voice said inside my head.
It’s now been 20 years since I came within seconds of death on a Sri Lankan beach during the most devastating tsunami on record. But despite the passing of time, my memories of that Boxing Day morning remain shockingly vivid.
Unlike the estimated 230,000 people who perished in the ocean that day, I was spared. Yet survival was only the beginning.
I’ve spent the past two decades coming to terms with the fact I am alive when so many others died, turning my survivor’s guilt into a determination to have a life of purpose and meaning.
It’s no surprise that the experience changed me, but what I never expected was that I would come to see the positives, even less that I would be using these lessons to help others.
In 2004 I was in my early 30s, with a flourishing media career as a journalist and my own home. I should have been happy and fulfilled – I had all the markers of a successful life. But instead I felt ‘grey’ and dissatisfied.
Landing in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo a few days before Christmas 2004, I was also fragile, following an episode of depression, something I’d suffered with on and off throughout my adult life.
My month-long holiday to Sri Lanka would, I hoped, be an opportunity to reset and reflect.
It would certainly prove to be transformative, but in ways I could never have predicted.
On December 23, I travelled by taxi from Colombo to Arugam Bay, a remote peninsula in the east of the country, surrounded by lush vegetation and with white sand beaches.
My home for the next few weeks was to be a small hotel there, run by my friend Sri, who was expecting her first child with her partner Wayne.
Driving under azure blue skies, coconut trees lining the roads and women in jewel coloured saris going about their daily business, I felt my tired body unwind and my spirits lift at the thought of time with dear friends in this beautiful country.
My hotel bedroom was a newly-constructed beach hut, built right on the sands. Simply decorated, with the sound of the waves lapping outside, it was perfect.
Christmas Day was spent with Sri, Wayne and their guests from around the world. We ate, drank and celebrated, relaxing in the sun and swimming in the warm, calm sea.
Climbing into bed that night, I felt relaxed and happy.
Hours later, it could not have been more different.
I groggily awoke to the sound of people shouting, and a strange roaring noise I couldn’t identify.
Suddenly, the door to my hut burst open and water began to pour in, submerging my bed within seconds. With no time to escape, I found myself completely underwater, being thrown around and battered by debris and furniture.
My lungs were burning but the water was pitch black and I was completely disorientated, with no idea which way was up.
I didn’t know it but I was in the grip of the tsunami that had been unleashed across the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day morning after a giant undersea earthquake struck off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Somehow, I found myself close to the ceiling of the room, my head above the water and I desperately sucked in the air as the sea swirled violently around me.
It was at that point I felt the urge to live, that this would not be my time to die.
No sooner had I made my promise but the concrete walls of my room began to disintegrate and I was swept outside at great speed.
Thrown into the path of a tree, at least a kilometre inland, I clung to it with every drop of strength I had, as people, telegraph poles and furniture hurtled past me.
My muscles ached as I held on, but I knew it was the only thing keeping me alive: I must not let go.
I have no idea how long I was there, but eventually I became aware of the roaring noise lessening and the water retreating to the shoreline.
Screams pierced the eerie silence and I gazed in shock at the devastation around me.
Dead bodies – young and old – boats, chairs from beach cafes, all floated in the now shallower water.
I felt as if I’d fallen asleep in paradise and awoken in hell.
Wading through the chest-high water, trying to avoid injuring my feet on the broken glass littering the ground, I miraculously found Sri and Wayne, who’d also been carried inland by the wave and ended up just 500 metres from me.
Wayne had injured his arm and kept insisting we needed to get back to the hotel for the first aid kit, but it was Sri who calmly voiced the reality.
‘There is no hotel anymore,’ she said.
In contrast to her, I was hysterical with shock, sobbing as we began to make our way back to the beach, all of us cut and bruised.
I realised then I had only a T-shirt on and was naked from the waist down. The water had ripped off my pyjama bottoms and jewellery, and my eardrums had burst from the roaring noise of the water.
But that was the least of my worries as we never made it to the beach.
Within minutes a second wave struck and we had to run for our lives, scrambling up to higher ground where, with a small group of other tourists and locals, we watched in horror as people simply vanished under the water.
Was it only a day ago that I’d been swimming in this same sea?
We huddled together, some sobbing, others in shellshocked silence, until several hours later a 4×4 vehicle arrived driven by a local, which had a radio and a satellite phone.
On the radio, reports explained that the tsunami had struck multiple countries at about 9am, but the enormous death toll was still unknown.
Somehow, my shocked brain managed to remember the number of the BBC switchboard from having worked there years before, and I phoned them, explaining to the person who answered the phone what had happened and to alert the British High Commission in Colombo.
‘There are many people here who need to be rescued and need medical treatment,’ I said, desperately.
When the High Commissioner called back, we spoke throughout the night, gathering names and establishing who was most injured.
Along with other survivors, I bandaged wounds with ripped clothing, hoping for daylight – and help – to arrive soon.
The following day we were airlifted by helicopter to a nearby town, where Wayne received medical treatment and from where I was driven back to Colombo.
I had nothing but the T-shirt I’d gone to sleep in on Christmas night, and a sarong someone had given me to cover myself while we waited to be rescued.
All my belongings had been washed away, including my passport. On New Year’s Day 2005, issued with emergency documentation, I flew back to the UK.
Looking at myself in the mirror of the airport toilet, I didn’t recognise the woman staring back.
Exhausted, bruised, her eyes were haunted by what she’d seen.
The months following the tsunami were intensely difficult.
As the enormous death toll was confirmed, and stories emerged of the lives wiped out, I suffered from survivor’s guilt and PTSD.
Those killed had included tiny children, entire families and newlyweds. I kept asking why I was still here when so many weren’t. I felt undeserving of my survival.
I struggled to sleep, convinced my bedroom in my London flat was about to fill with water, and the slightest noise outside could send me into a spiral of panic.
It was exhausting, living on edge all the time and, although family and friends were incredibly supportive, nobody could really understand what I’d experienced.
Eventually I underwent specialist trauma psychotherapy and that, and time, did help. It wasn’t an easy journey to make, but in 2006 I returned to Sri Lanka.
I felt very nervous about returning to Arugam Bay, anxious about the impact seeing it again might have on me, but I also knew I had to face my memories and make peace with them.
What I saw was a community still healing but determined to rebuild, while never forgetting those it had lost.
Sri and Wayne had reconstructed the hotel and being reunited with them, and holding their son Luke, who’d been born safely six months after the tsunami, was so special. He felt like a symbol of survival and hope.
Time passed but the question I’d been asking myself since that day never left my mind: why was I still here? I realised I needed to begin answering it.
I changed career and began working for NGOs, spending time in Iraq during the war there, and also for UK charities, including as head of projects at Cancer Research UK.
I met my husband Andrea in 2010 while on holiday in Greece, and finding love and happiness with him took me another step along my healing journey.
However, the tsunami would not be my only experience facing my own mortality. Soon after meeting Andrea, I was diagnosed with breast cancer aged 39 and, like anyone hearing those words, I was terrified.
For a time, I gave up work and dedicated my life to my health, absorbing myself in holistic wellbeing practices alongside my medical treatment. I qualified as a yoga teacher, and also in acupuncture and reiki.
In 2014, I was again diagnosed with breast cancer but went into remission and have remained so for the past decade.
Since then, I have found purpose as an executive coach, using evidence-based psychology and teachings from ancient wisdom to help people unlock their potential, as well as a public speaker.
Now, aged 53, I work with successful clients leading stressful lives.
They remind me of the ‘old me’ who got on that flight to Sri Lanka in December 2004, as they often have all the trappings of success but lack personal fulfilment.
I use my own experiences to help them through their challenges.
One of the most valuable lessons I learned that day, and share with clients, is that challenges are opportunities for growth.
If we reframe the idea that life is something that happens to us and think of it as something that happens for us and through us, then we are more able to trust that things will work out for our greatest good.
I also tell the people I work with ‘I am living proof that in your darkest hour you can find your greatest strength, and emerge a better version of yourself’.
Life is so short and can change in a heartbeat. I know this so well.
My advice is to make every decision with your fulfilment at the heart of it and cherish every opportunity for happiness.
Helping others gives me immense satisfaction and my mission is to change the same number of lives as those that were lost in the tsunami.
It’s my way of honouring those who didn’t survive.
Boxing Day 2004 still feels like yesterday in many ways and my gratitude that I survived will never lessen.
But while the tsunami almost took my life, in the end it changed it – and me – for the better.
- Tsunami: The Wave That Saved My Life And Can Save Yours by Ani Naqvi is out now (ultimateresultsgroup.com)
- As told to Eimear O’Hagan
