God, God, God ... why, why, why?
Then they were asked to move aside and make way for the others who had their own loved ones to bury, denied any chance for a service or private mourning.
In a scene repeated dozens of times, weeping and red-eyed parents held a mass burial yesterday for more than 150 children who died in the killer tidal wave that battered India's south-eastern coast.
About half of the nearly 400 people who perished in Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu state were children, leaving the town of 100,000 people in stunned bereavement.
According to Hindu tradition, children are not cremated like adults but buried. For the grim task, two pits, together the size of half a basketball court, were dug near the banks of Pennai river on the edge of this coconut palm-fringed town.
Most of the children, who were aged between five and 12, were buried as they were found - in their Sunday clothes without even the luxury of a shroud. The district administration was eager to get the burial - and the cremation of adults - over quickly so that they could turn their attention to providing relief for the survivors.
"There will be a time for crying, but that will come later. Now the priority is to shelter those who survived," said fisherman Akilan, 28, who lost two nephews when the waves struck their seaside house. Akilan uses only one name.
A mile away at the town morgue, bodies of young and old lay unclaimed, awaiting identification by relatives. They were called in one by one by doctors on a public address system.
Many people came out of the morgue shaking their heads in silence. Once in a while, a heart-rending cry would pierce the buzz of conversation.
As a small body was lowered from a morgue van to a bed, a man cried out: "My son, my king."
Venkatesh, 37, wept inconsolably as he identified 11-year-old Suman.
Venkatesh was in Dubai when he got a call from his wife in Cuddalore that their boy was missing in the tsunami.
He flew out of Dubai immediately and reached Cuddalore yesterday morning, heading straight to the morgue where he was united with his wife and daughter minutes before Suman's body was brought in. A few moments later an identification tag was tied to the boy's hand and the body taken inside the morgue for paper work before being handed over to the parents.
Venkatesh's cries were drowned out as more parents surged forward.
Similar scenes of grief and despair were unfolding all round the devastated continent.
In Galle, Sri Lanka, where the earthquake has claimed 12,000 lives, the corridors of the hospital were lined with bloated bodies.
"We have had over 950 bodies here so far and they are still coming in," said hospital administrator Dr Jayaratne.
Desperately anxious Sri Lankans tip-toed around the dead, looking for their loved ones.
One woman collapsed as she found the body of her five-year-old daughter, her tiny body bruised all over and her face locked in a grimace.
"God! God! God! Why? Why? Why?" she wailed, tearing at her hair.
