The Tsunami Summary & Notes - CBSE Class 8 English Honeydew

Summary of The Tsunami

Chapter 2 of the Class 8 English Main Coursebook – Honeydew, consists of prose – The Tsunami, which comprises three parts about the destruction and havoc caused by a natural calamity. It caused massive damage and loss of life and property and left thousands of people homeless. Read the prose summary of CBSE Class 8 English Prose Notes – The Tsunami in CBSE English Notes Class 8 format here. We hope this brief summary will help students to get an in-depth understanding of the chapter and prepare for their English exam confidently.

To prepare for the writing section of the Class 8 English exam, students must practice essays on various topics. By doing so, they can easily score marks in essay writing.

CBSE Class 8 English The Tsunami Summary

Here we bring you the summary of the second unit, ‘The Tsunami’ of the Class 8 English Main Coursebook – Honeydew. This unit is divided into three parts. Each part deals with how a few people inspired others to help each other in difficult times when the tsunami hit different parts of the world. We have explained each of the parts in the simple language below:

The Tsunami: Part 1 Summary

Part 1 consists of four stories of people who faced the deadly tsunami on December 26, 2004. It discusses how the lives of different people who hailed from the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago were impacted by the effect of the dreadful tsunami.

In the first story, Ignesious is a manager of a cooperative society in Katchall. His wife woke him up at 6 a.m. when she could sense a few tremors. However, it was not just a simple earthquake, it was the sea rising. A tsunami had struck that place. The waves were so huge that they swept away his family, including his wife, children, father-in-law and brother-in-law.

In the second story of Part 1, a policeman named Sanjeev saved his family members comprising his wife and his baby daughter, from the dangerous waves. However, he drowned while trying to rescue the guest house cook, John’s wife, due to huge waves that washed both of them away.

The third incident of Part 1 is about a thirteen-year-old girl, Meghna, who was swept away by the waves along with her parents and many other people. She was floating in the sea, holding a wooden plank and was brought to shore by a wave. Although she was saved, she was completely dazed as she walked on the seashore.

The fourth story of Part 1 is about Almas Javed, a ten-year-old girl. Her father had noticed that the seawater was receding after the tremors. He realised this was a sign of a bigger danger, so he warned everyone to take shelter in a safer place. While he was helping others, a huge wave came and washed away Almas’s father, along with her grandfather. Slowly her entire family has swept away, while Almas climbed on a floating wooden log and fainted. When she woke up, she found herself in a hospital in Kamorta. She was so traumatised that she never talked about the incident with anyone.

The Tsunami: Part 2 Summary

Part 2 is the story of a young British schoolgirl named Tilly Smith, who visited Phuket Beach in Thailand with her family to celebrate Christmas. On 26th December 2004, she and her entire family were on the beach. She and her mother noticed that the sea waves were slowly rising. They had started to foam and were making whirlpools. Although her mother was not much worried about the signs, Tilly could sense something was not right.

Tilly remembered that her geography teacher had once mentioned that tsunamis could be caused by earthquakes, violent tremors, volcanoes and landslides. She raised an alarm that the deadly waves were the signs of a tsunami. She informed her family and many people on the beach so that they could return to the hotel as soon as possible. Luckily, the hotel that Tilly’s family was residing in could withstand the tsunami’s impact, and they were all saved from the disaster.

The Tsunami: Part 3 Summary

Part 3 of the unit mentions the sixth sense of animals in identifying disastrous natural calamities. Many animals, both domestic and wild, could sense the coming of the tsunami during December 2004, and they rushed into their shelters and were hesitant to come out of their homes. Around 1,50,000 people lost their lives in a dozen countries, while in comparison, only a few animals died in the disaster.

The Yala National Park, located in Sri Lanka, is home to a huge variety of animals and birds. Almost 60 visitors died, while only two animals’ carcasses were found. Also, a few park people had observed that three elephants were running away from the Patanangala beach an hour before the tsunami struck it. In another incident, a Sri Lankan gentleman who lived near the Galle coast had two dogs who refused to go for a walk on the beach. This was indeed a warning signal for them and their master, who were saved from the massive impact of the tsunami.

Conclusion of The Tsunami

The chapter – The Tsunami teaches a lesson to students that a tsunami is a natural disaster that causes massive destruction and immense loss to life and property. In each story, we learnt about hard life lessons and reassuring details of determination, courage, resilience and survival. One should exhibit acts of courage, compassion and responsibility in the tough struggle of endurance and restoration. Presenting the CBSE Class 8 English Honeydew Prose Summary of The Tsunami that must have helped 8th Standard students to have a thorough understanding of the chapter.

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