By Sanjay Rajan
NAGAPATTINAM, India, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Two years after a wall of water crashed into this southern Indian town, 28-year-old Tamilselvi and her fisherman husband are rebuilding their lives despite losing those who made it worthwhile -- their children.
Sitting inside her makeshift, dingy shack and staring at photographs of her three children who died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, she eagerly waits for her only surviving child, 11-year-old son Thivek, to return from school.
"Life has not been the same since," she said on Wednesday at the Ackarapettai tsunami camp in Nagapattinam, where more than 6,000 people were killed, more than a third of them children.
"We are grateful for the support we got but nothing can ever compensate for the loss of children. The happiness of having all four kids is now lost forever," she told Reuters, admitting that she sometimes considers suicide as way out of her torment.
With so many children dead, aid groups and mental health experts say enabling people to have new sons and daughters has been vital if communities are to move forward.
For Tamilselvi this has meant a stay in a local hospital where doctors reversed a sterilisation operation carried out under a state-sponsored family planning programme.
A complicated procedure, success rates hover around 50 percent for younger women, gynaecologists say.
While the surgery has brought many new faces to the city in the last two years, Tamilselvi has been unlucky so far and complains of bouts of severe pain in her lower abdomen and back.
She says she wants a girl and has not given up hope.
"This is not urban life where families want to limit children to one or two ... In our community numbers mean strength, a house needs to have three or four children."
HOMES, JOBS, HOPE
The Dec. 26 2004 catastrophe, generated by a massive earthquake off Indonesia, killed more than 231,000 people in a dozen nations on the rim of the Indian Ocean.
While India was generally praised for providing relief to victims following the tragedy, as in other affected countries, providing permanent housing has been slow.
Preeti Das, a coordinator with development agency ActionAid, said that in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami there was a flood of aid but very little thought of cultural needs.
"For this reason, despite two years going by, so many people are yet to get their permanent shelter even though there was no shortage of funds," Das said.
Tamilselvi's family has been promised a new home when the second and final set of houses in the district is completed.
"So far 6,000 houses have been completed," Nagapattinam official Tenkasi Jawahar said. "Around 8,000 families are still in temporary shelters, and we hope to shift them all into permanent housing by the end of March."
Locals had been consulted in the rebuilding, he said, but added that some people would have to adapt.
"The relief part is over, now is the rehabilitation phase. We have built the houses away from the sea for safety reasons and for want for availability of land," he said.
For Tamilselvi's 30-year-old husband Iraivan, who was out at sea as the killer waves struck, the ocean offers an escape from the sadness that lingers onshore.
"Fishing expeditions which go on for three or four days helps me take my mind off the tragedy," he said. "But life has become tedious and unhappy for my wife because of loneliness."
