Miracle tsunami survivor returns to razed home

CAR NICOBAR, India, Tuesday (AFP) - Meghna Raj Shekhar, who survived the tsunami by floating on a door for two days, trembled visibly when she sighted her favourite coffee mug in the rubble that had once been her home on India's Nicobar island.

"I want to see my home," the 14-year-old girl said on reaching the remote Indian Ocean island for a memorial service for 119 Indian air force personnel and their relatives who died on December 26, 2004.

Meghna was swept out to sea along with her father, Squadron Leader Raj Shekhar, her mother, younger brother and 77 others. While the others drowned she floated for two days on a wooden door.

"I remember seeing choppers passing overhead 11 times and several times relief planes passed but they did not spot me and finally a wave threw me back on the shore," Meghna said.

The badly-bruised girl was found 20 kilometres (12 miles) from her wrecked home two days later. "I fought off sea snakes to stay alive and today I want to see my home for the last time," the 10th-grader said.

Trembling, she walked gingerly through the cordoned-off rubble near Car Nicobar's golden beaches. Tears glistened as she picked up household objects.

"Hey, my bangle and, Oh! Here's dad's shoes," she said of her father, an air force metereologist.

"I've found my coffee mug... mom used to fill to the brim with milk," Meghna whispered after picking up a bone-china cup filled with snails and sea garbage.

Meghna's escort, Lieutenant Colonel N. Chakravarty, broke down while top-ranking commanders attending the memorial watched in silence as the young orphan walked through the debris.

Chakravarty's two children were Meghna's best friends until they too perished in the Indian Ocean along with their mother.

Following medical treatment, Meghna was handed over to her grandparents in the southern city of Hyderabad where she was enrolled in a boarding school.

"During holidays I go and spend time with anyone I like," she said pointing to surviving air force officers and their families attending the service.

"They are my fathers and mothers. I love them as much as they love me," she said, tears staining her flowing white shirt.

The girl said she was determined to write a book about her ordeal.

"I have already completed two and a half chapters of my experience and I want to record the experience of others in the rest of my book but first I want to complete my studies."

Commander Salil Mehta, a former colleague of Meghna's father, was at her side like a shadow.

"It take guts to come back to a location of such unimaginable tragedy," said Mehta, unable to conceal his own emotions as Meghna tugged at the sleevs of his ceremonial naval uniform jacket.