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Monday March 21, 4:34 PM
Tsunami slows pilgrims' progress to Velankanni
By Y.P. Rajesh
VELANKANNI, India (Reuters) - It's almost noon on the first day of the holy Easter week and hawker Jesuraj is yet to sell a single rosary.
There are hardly a few hundred pilgrims on the streets, fewer inside the famous Marian Shrine of our Lady of Good Health, the parking lots have only a handful of vehicles and hotels have plenty of room.
"Before the tsunami, I would have sold a dozen rosaries by now. The crowds used to be so thick, you could hardly walk on these streets," Jesuraj said. "Have people lost faith in the Almighty because of the tsunami?"
It is a question more and more people in Velankanni, whose livelihood depends on the flow of pilgrims to this holy town on India's southeastern coast, are beginning to ask.
Officials at the Roman Catholic basilica said more than a million pilgrims -- Christians, Hindus and Muslims in mainly Hindu India, as well as foreigners -- visited the shrine on an average every month.
Since the tsunami, only half that number come to seek miracle cures or give thanks for blessings.
The government estimates the Dec. 26 tsunami killed at least 300 people in Velankanni. Residents and church officials put the toll at more than 2,000, mostly pilgrims who flocked to the beach a day after Christmas.
In the first few days after the giant waves hit this two road town, the alleys were littered with corpses of pilgrims, many of them unidentified and buried in mass graves.
But the giant waves barely touched the outer walls of the ornate, white and red Gothic shrine built by Portuguese sailors in the 17th century.
"DEATH NOT AN END"
"The waves were not so vehement here compared to other places," said Father P. Xavier, rector of the shrine.
"But we had more deaths because the road to the beach was filled with shops and they blocked the view of the sea. Pilgrims could not see the waves come to be able to run to safety."
But it has had its impact on visitors and the priest feels it could be due to an "internal, latent fear".
Faith in the divine, however, should not be shaken he said and added many people reported how they were miraculously saved when the tsunami waves tossed them to safety on rooftops and behind buildings.
"The Christian faith is not contrary to such events," he said. "Redemption itself is based on life and death. Death is not everything, but then ordinary people cannot understand this."
Some shopkeepers and hawkers in Velankanni seem to understand though. Pushed to the wall by falling business, they have taken to using the tsunami to promote sales.
"Tsunami VCDs Available here" say signs outside some music and video shops. They are selling CDs which show an amateur video of the giant waves lashing the coast south of Velankanni, pictures of destruction and suffering, and some gut-wrenching scenes of mass burials.
"They are doing good business," says Ashraf Ali, showing a three-CD pack priced at 90 rupees.
Others like 12-year-old Mansoor, who hawks stickers of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, try to strike an emotional chord.
"The water washed away everything we had. My father is injured and my mother does not work. Please buy some stickers and feed a tsunami family," the boy pleads repeatedly.
It works. Every second pilgrim he approaches makes a purchase.
