For Sri Lanka, a 'ground zero'

Officials at Telwatte today either don't know, or won't say, how many passengers perished. The figure is estimated between 800 and 1,200 out of some 30,000 deaths in Sri Lanka. Civilian authorities say only 100 people survived.

One of the most widely told tale of survival in the country is the rescue of Sathsara, a 4-year old boy.

After the first wave struck, Sathsara's parents, who could not swim, worked to save their son. Just as the second wave arrived they pushed the boy through a hatch in the roof where his cries caught the attention of a "railroad engineer" who pulled him up. The "engineer," who no one has since been able to find, kept the boy with him as they were swept away in the water. His aunt says that the boy remembered where his uncle worked in Colombo, and Sathsara was eventually delivered to their care.

Today, Telwatte is still a random landscape of tragedy: A sari is plastered against a tree, a suitcase is spilled next to a train door, a muddy tennis racket made in China, scattered macaroni on the ground, a pile of pocketbooks presumably emptied by scavengers. Teams of Air force and Army soldiers are making braces to pull the cars out. Most wear kerchiefs because the smell is overpowering, and not all corpses have been removed. A small dog, obviously nursing, runs back and forth, whining, looking for pups.

At the site, many survivors have left pictures of those who perished. Here and across the country the question that hangs in the air is "why"?

Thuresh, the woodcarver, says that his family has decided that nature, after 2,000 years, has made a statement.

O.G. Guruge, a senior politician in Sri Lanka's west coast district, told reporters on the scene that the tsunami was sent by "Lord Buddha." Mr. Guruge said the wave was Buddha's retribution for not taking care of the earth properly, and it was also a judgment on a Buddhist nation where "corrupt priests drive around in big cars and don't pray enough."

In Sri Lankan churches, temples, and mosques, similar questions are raised. On Sunday, many of the newspapers here published commentary that tried to draw meaning and lessons from the Telwatte train tragedy and the tsunami.

A local philosopher, Ajith Samaranayake, asked in the Sri Lankan Sunday Observer whether or not the tsunami would jolt local people into a far more sober appraisal of their personal and national shortcomings than before. He noted that Sri Lanka was the first British colony to be granted universal suffrage, but that the country has not lived up to its promise.

On a kind of metaphysical jeremiad, Mr. Samaranayake added that the tsunami may be a lesson in humility: "For a stark moment, man in the new millennium, armoured supposedly against all calamities by his rational technological outlook and advanced political philosophies, has been rendered helpless by nature ... his cities ruined and laid low and all his grand inventions in disarray."

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