Earthquake survivors remember the dead

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Bhuj is the main city of Kutch where some 30,000 people were killed by the January 26 earthquake and hundreds of thousands were left homeless, hungry and vulnerable to water-borne diseases.

The U.S. Geological Survey said on Tuesday that it had revised its measurement of the devastating quake to 7.7 on the Richter scale from a preliminary 7.9.

Shortly after sunrise on Wednesday, clusters of mourning men and women gathered at a public ground in Bhuj to chant vedic hymns.

"This is a very significant ceremony. After 12 days the soul severs all its ties with the material world. This helps relatives to go on with their lives," Hindu seer Sadhu Paramtattva Das said.

Dressed in saffron robes and their heads shaved, holy men used a magnifying glass to focus sunrays to kindle a flame. Hindus regard fire lit by the sun as extremely purifying.

"We are invoking the Sun God. We are using his warmth, his energy, his radiance," said Das.

Such ceremonies are normally held privately with relatives and close friends, but many people joined the ceremony at Bhuj as they had no homes in which to conduct them and could not call a priest for the rituals.

"I am feeling mentally relaxed now," said Jagdish Mahicha, whose eight-year-old son, Amit, was crushed to death by a wall.

"He was sleeping because it was a holiday. His body is still there." After the earthquake, Mahicha ran to his son’s bedroom on the first floor of the building, but his son had already died. "He never woke up."

Mahicha seemed to lapse into grief again as he pulled out a wallet to show his son’s school identity card of his son. But he consoled himself saying many people had lost their entire family.

"In some ways God has been kind to me," he said.

Relief work continued across the blighted district of Kutch on Wednesday, with the focus now on rehabilitation for more than a million people as well as temporary shelter, food and safe drinking water.

According to reports, the government of Gujarat had started a food-for-work programme under which labourers are sent to places in dire need of help in return for Rs. 35 a day, some foodgrain and accomodation.

Media reports said that the home minister had called a ministerial meeting in New Delhi to discuss how to deal with the mammoth task of providing relief.

The state and central governments have been sharply criticised in the media for failing to co-ordinate aid properly.

According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, there were some villages which had not received any aid 10 days after the quake struck.