Velayudhan slowly picks up poles from a huge pile of debris that once supported his house. His wife sits in a corner lighting a fire. His children, two daughters and a son, are helping him to bring some order to the chaos all around.
"Today, we are going to eat in our house. The government gave us rice and Rs 4000. I have bought some vessels and now my wife is preparing lunch where our kitchen used to be," says Velayudhan, finding it difficult to stop the tears from welling up in his eyes.
His family was lifted up and thrown several metres away from the house by the tsunami. When the waves receded as quickly as it struck, they also swallowed all that Velayudhan had; his refrigerator, television, VCD player, washing machine, vessels. Even their clothes were not spared.
"We survived but lost everything else... My father lost his boat and fishing nets," Velayudhan's daughter, who was working in a leather factory, says. "We have not lost our carom board. There it is..." she laughs.
The father and daughter look at the picture of a goddess clinging from one of the poles, unaffected by the fury of nature, and say, "We do not know how it survived. Perhaps this one remained here to make us believe in God, to give us hope... No, we can never be angry with God. God saved us though he took everything away from us. I am waiting for the day I can end this wretched way of life. I want to go back to the sea as soon as possible." Velayudhan says as he continues his work.
Also read: Death by the sea