December 30, 2004 - (NY Times) Bhupati brought her two boys, 8 and 6, to higher ground when the tsunami struck and ran back for the baby, Preetika, 2. The girl had been rescued by someone else and survived. The mother of three, searching frantically, did not.

"We don't know how to save these children's future," their uncle Kanakaraj, 35, said on Thursday, at a village wedding hall that had been turned into a relief camp. "A mother's care is needed." His concern for his brother's children was admirable, given what had happened to his own. All three were swept away in the tsunami on Sunday as their mother, Manonamani, tried, but failed, to save them.

A childless mother, motherless children - in one extended family, a microcosm of the way the water bruised its way across Asia. Many men died, but women and children appear to have died in even larger numbers.

That is certainly true in this coastal fishing village of 5,000 in Tamil Nadu state, where 206 bodies have been found so far. Of them, only 26 were those of men, compared with 96 women and 84 children. Most of the missing, possibly 200 or 300 more, appear to be children, too.

In the larger subdistrict, 54 men died, but so did 194 women and 176 children. In the district of Nagipattinam as a whole, the district with the greatest number of confirmed deaths in all of India, 4,332 deaths have been recorded, with men accounting for 1,378. Dead women and children together number 2,954.

Some here blame fate for the tsunami, others blame geology. But other factors also determined who lived and who died on that morning.

Biology, for one: the men on shore had the speed to outrun the towering wall of water, and the strength to hold onto whatever they could as the water tried to snatch them away. Sociology, for another: here, the men are the providers, and were thus away at sea about six miles from shore, which on that day proved the safest haven. The women fell prey at home, or at the fish market where the water barreled in. On a Sunday morning, the tsunami found many of the children at their homes just feet from the sea, rather than at a safer distance, at school.

On Thursday, fishermen searched the remnants of their homes for the remains of their families. They had always worked bare-handed, but for this task they wore rubber gloves. They crowded around, holding up two or three fingers to show how many children they had lost.

Out fishing on Sunday, the men had felt the sea rise and slowly shake; had seen it turn inky, then white, but had no idea what awaited them at home. The first hint came when they saw bodies floating as they approached the shore.

At home, the women had run at the sounds of screams and the sight of the water, taking hold of as many children as they could. For desperate mothers, two hands were not enough. Shanti Kumar, 35, grabbed two of her four children, but lost two. Vir Lakshmi saved two and lost one, her 8-year-old daughter, Kalesilui.

"I could not hold three," she said.

Chinnapillai, 60, who like many Tamils uses only one name, had taken her grandchildren, Kokila, 5, and Muraganna, 2, to watch the fishing boats come in. When everyone began running, the grandmother grabbed the children and ran, too, not even looking behind her. When the water washed over her, she landed on a cottage. The children vanished.

Now she was so consumed with guilt that she had stopped eating. One month before, she had insisted that her daughter and grandchildren leave their village and come live with her, because domestic strife had erupted in their home.

"I killed the children," she said. "I forced them to come to my house."

Her daughter, Banumathi, 22, had left early Sunday morning to go to a temple in her home village, resisting her children's cries that they be allowed to go, too. On Thursday, she cried herself, and then cried some more, flagellating herself with "if onlys": if only she had taken them with her, if only they had not gone to stay at their grandmother's.

At the relief center, where squabbles over food rent the air, dazed children and parents wandered past one another.

With none of his own left, Kanakaraj watched over his brother's solemn-faced motherless children.

The brothers had gone out to sea Sunday morning, leaving wives and children behind. At home, Manonamani was feeding Naveen Kumar, 8, and watching Priya Dharsini, 10, play with Rumani, 3, when the sea reared up and she heard screams. She grabbed Naveen and Rumani, while Priya ran at her side. But Manonamani did not know how to swim, and when the water overtook them, the children slipped from her hands.

"I had no power to run away," she said. "I lost them." Kanakaraj found her unconscious in a house, then found his brother's children safe on a top floor. "My own children I could not see," he said. He found their bodies two days later.

Manonamani said, "I would have been happy if even only one of my own had been saved."

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/31/international/worldspecial4/31india.html?oref=login