INDIA: In his hands Raja Shekar held two small parcels of food, wrapped in neat squares of newspaper: a donation from a local charity that was his only food for the night. He walked away from the crowd and showed the path back to his house.
The sand was strewn with mud-drenched saris, palm fronds from the thatched roofs in the village, torn fishing nets, children's schoolbooks and a broken wooden cabinet. It led to a modest turquoise-tiled brick building set right at the edge of the beach at Kanaga Chettkuluan, a small fishing village a few hours down the eastern Indian coastline from the city of Madras.
Here a tidemark well above head height showed where the water thundered into Mr Shekar's house early on Sunday morning, in just a few minutes destroying his livelihood, washing away his family's possessions and cash savings and finally drowning his sister Saraga, 20.
"I was working on my nets on the shore," he said yesterday. "We saw the water coming and I ran with my sister back to the house. The water came and it just dragged her back out. By then the water level was above the door."
As others ran back inland, he clambered back to the house to find his sister. "I searched three hours for my sister, but I couldn't find her. Nobody else was here, everybody had run. I should have run too but I wanted to find her."
After the water had washed completely back to sea he found her body, lying on the ground barely 20 yards from their house.
"She came here," he said, pointing at the spot, covered now by a pile of palm fronds and broken furniture.
Yesterday she was buried, along with a dozen others from the village, in a broad patch of sand half-a-mile to the north.
There was a line of rough mounds in the ground, unmarked save for a small, square stone. There had been no time for the traditional Hindu rituals, Mr Shekar said, and this grieved him almost as much as the loss of his sister. Grief had spread through the village. Among the dead was a young girl, Anousha, aged three.
"My house collapsed and I had my daughter's hand in mine as we ran back from the water," said her distraught father, Raja. "But the wave took her from my hands." From the same spot Mr Shiva Prakashan (26), saw his father swept away by the waves.
"He was sitting by the street and suddenly the water came," he said. "I looked back and he was gone."
Four others from the village were still missing last night.
His village was one of the worst-hit on this area of coastline, but in dozens more nearby the devastation was similar: fridges ripped open and thrown out of houses, brick homes crumbled into the sand, and the entire gold and cash savings of thousands of families from the poorest castes washed away.
More than 3,000 died along the Indian coast, and thousands more were injured and left homeless.
The fishermen can earn up to 24,000 rupees a month (nearly €405) but many described how they stored their earnings in cash at home, or spent their income on televisions, mobile telephones and compact disc players - all lost in the flood.
"I don't have a sari to change into. I have nothing to eat," said Sandti (40), one of the women from the village.
"We lost everything, our boat, our nets, all our gold. The government has provided nothing."
After dark, visitors did come: a convoy of 20 cars surrounded by policemen, honking their horns, blocking the road and bringing local politicians from the All-India Dravida People's party.
The politicians promised they could influence the prime minister into increasing the compensation payments for villagers, already set at 10,000 rupees (€168) for each house destroyed. But they stayed barely a minute, turned their convoy round and left as quickly and noisily as they came.- (Guardian Service)