There must be hundreds of houses in Bommaiyarpalayam, a small fishing village on the beach north of Pondicherry. The houses closest to the water are all simply gone -- a little shrine here, some bricks there, the only signs that they ever existed. The others are mostly badly damaged. Thirumurugan, showing us around, insists that we must see pretty much every damaged house. "Bombay-le irindu patrikar vandirkango" ("Journalists have come from Bombay"), he says over and over again as we walk about. I'm struck, and saddened, by the things the people here do to give the journalists from Bombay an idea of the monster that whacked them and to drive home that idea. It's hardly as if we need it driven home – the destruction and pain is evident. And yet they do it.

There's 45-year-old Muthulakshmi. She tells me that a log from a catamaran hit her in her mouth, knocking a tooth out. She shows me the gap to confirm this. But the blow also loosened another tooth. She grabs that one and shakes it to confirm. Shake, shake, shake, until my appeals not to do it get through to her.

There's Anjalai, 60, who sits on the ground and wails gently, rocking back and forth. Her sari is pulled up to above her knees -- otherwise a shockingly immodest way for a woman to sit, but here I can see why. She was hit by catamaran logs too, but on her legs. She has bandages on both knees. She wants me to see them, beckons to me until I go over. As I get close, she begins to untie a bandage, to show me the wound. Don't do that, I say. Then she starts to pull the bandage down. Don't do that, I say again, sternly this time. Then she tells me her teeth were also broken -- they look fine, but perhaps she feels she has to keep up with Muthulakshmi, who has just shaken her tooth for me -- and the wave has left her deaf.

There's Amurtham with the deep cut on her knuckle. There are signs of pus in it and it looks bad. Why haven't you treated it, or bandaged it, I ask. Doctors came, she says with an almost sly smile, but she didn't have them look at it. I get the impression she keeps it like this solely to find sympathy in visitors like me. My Tamil isn't good enough to tell her it might turn septic or gangrenous or whatever happens to untreated cuts, so I put it simply: you don't do something about your finger, it's going to drop off. She only smiles some more.

There's Chelliamma with the unhealthy pink cast to her face; on her cheek, a scar that looks like a broken blister. Catamaran logs hit her too. She says she has severe pain in her waist from the blow. She points to her waist. Then she actually pulls off the pallu of her sari, her blouse falls nearly fully open, she pulls it up substantially -- again, a shockingly immodest thing for a woman to do -- and points to her waist once more.

And there's Miniamma, just as we are about to leave Bommaiyarpalayam. She offers us coffee. Nothing else.

The color of the wave? Thirumurugan thinks for a moment, looks around him. There! He points to the painted strip on the bows of a fishing boat nearby. A dull orange, the strip. That colour, says Thirumurugan. I can't imagine a wave of that colour, but that's what he says.

I don't know if it's because of the colour or the misery the tsunami brought, but every time Thirumurugan and others refer to the wave, they also speak of the "fire" in the water. As in, it brought "fire" in its jaws as it swept into Bommaiyarpalayam and out again. An interesting, and for what happened here, telling metaphor.

But the wave brought something less metaphorical as well, more real. Mud. Elsewhere in Tamil Nadu, we've seen evidence of that -- mud inside clocks, inside pots, plastered on the floor of a room, stinking, everywhere. But in Bommaiyarpalayam, the fisher folk speak of it as bhoomi (earth), invariably with their hands cupped and doing a lifting motion, saying to me that the wave scooped up the very bottom of the sea, the stinky muddy bottom of the sea, and flung it violently at them.

Palani Arumugam's daughter Madina -- a gorgeous and alert two-year-old -- swallowed some of that mud from the wave. Over a week later, says Palani, she still brings bits of it out from time to time. Madina smiles up at me. I try not to think of her muddied insides.

And when this bhoomi-filled tongue of fire dressed up as a wave struck, it