In Indian fishing village, they are fearful of the sea

The scene from Sunday is still horrific for villagers.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
KALLAR, India -- For three generations, the ocean sustained Sumathi Bakkarisami's fishing family. Now, it sends shivers down her spine.
"When I see the sea, I'm afraid," she said Friday in the doorway of her ruined home, the surf crashing a few hundred yards behind her. "Please take me away from this place."
From many of the fisherman who populate south India's coast, Sunday's tsunami took away not only families and possessions but also the boats that brought in the bounty. Yet for most survivors, there is little choice but to return to the only profession they know.
Three hundred people were killed, and another 300 are missing and presumed dead in the village of Kallar, a few miles south of the city of Nagappattinam. Pools of sea water surround heavily damaged homes near the beach. A utility pole of reinforced concrete lies snapped at the base, cut down like a tree. Across an inlet, smoke rises up from the unending cremations of bodies on the beach.
Their experience
The events of Sunday remain etched in the mind of Bakkarisami, a stoutly built 32-year-old woman.
When she and her children saw the water rushing toward their front door, they sprinted toward the back door. The water moved so fast, it got there first.
Trapped in their house as the water level rose, they held onto anything to keep from being washed away. Her 10-year-old daughter Shobika, clutching a 14-month-old cousin, grabbed onto the metal security grill on the back door and clambered to the top.
The water rose above their heads to the height of the ceiling fan, and still Shobika held on. Finally, the water receded. Somehow, both she and the baby survived. So did her husband, who was out fishing.
Bakkarisami, herself from a fishing family, married into a family of four brothers, all fishermen. Together, they built comfortable lives by Indian standards. They had a television, a telephone and jewelry, luxuries that many Indians can't afford. On Sunday, the sea took it all away.
Neither the television nor the telephone works. The 10 gold coins they owned are gone. Their small concrete house is filled with sand, four to five inches deep.
Bakkarisami hopes her children will go to school and find a new line of work. "Everything we made through fishing, we lost," she said. "We don't want to make the same mistake again."
Ask her neighbors what they need most, though, and they say fishing boats and gear.
"If we're able to get boat, we'd be able to lead the same life again," Thangamani Vellaichuvada said.
Said the 55-year-old Vellaichuvada: "I'm afraid of the sea, but there's no other option," she said. "Without the sea, we cannot survive in this world."