People arrive for evening prayers at the Velankanni church on Tuesday. (AFP)

Velankanni, Dec. 29: The killer waves spared the 17th century ?minor basilica? to the Lady of Health at Velankanni but not the faithful who had turned up at its door on Sunday.

It was a day after Christmas and they had come in thousands from across India to the multi-cultural pilgrim centre, about 10 km from Nagapattinam, the worst-hit district in Tamil Nadu.

?Curling dark waves up to 30 ft high came from nowhere between 9.15 and 9.30 in the morning,? said Santhanaraj, owner of a small shop on the beach road leading to the shrine.

About 1,000-1,500 pilgrims were on the shore at the time along with their relatives, and within minutes ?nobody could be seen?.

The pilgrims, usually after a tonsure, ?are given small plastic buckets to help themselves with a dip in the nearby sea?, explained Santhanaraj. But ?none who went with the buckets to the beach that day came back?.

The tonsure centre, hotels and tourist spots are all deserted today, with the surviving pilgrims having fled in fear of recurring tsunamis. The hair tonsured on Sunday is the only evidence of the pilgrim rush.

Close to the tonsure centre, bulldozers and other heavy earth-moving equipment worked incessantly to clear the silted debris to recover bodies. At work were personnel from the Tamil Nadu Special Task Force, which till a few months ago was chasing forest brigand Veerappan.

Jyothi, from Vellore district, ran around asking if anybody had seen her 26-year-old son J. Raja and pleading with them to ?wire her? if they did.

Beating her chest, she showed the last picture of Raja taken by his friend by the seashore. The photograph shows Raja walking towards the waves for a holy dip; then he could not be seen, cries his friend.

Behind Jyothi lay the bodies of two children, who were fished out from a ruined house. They were placed in a tractor nearby.

?There is very little help from the government. It is the church and its volunteers that are doing most of the rescue and relief work,? said John Bhaskar, a boatman and part of the Catholic Youth League that is assisting in the rehabilitation here. ?Two days before the tragedy,? he said, ?there was a strong gust of wind in the same direction that the tsunami took. It was eerie and I thought some evil was near, but no one believed me.?

Robinson, also of the youth league, said that on the first day ?we did not even have proper rubber gloves to remove the bodies?. CPI state secretary R. Nallakannu then ?sent us 200 pairs of gloves?, he added.