Dilip Kuruvilla understands that his life has changed in some significant manner, but cannot quite figure out exactly how.
Until Sunday morning, he saw himself as a successful merchant banker and a keen weekend angler. But that was the day he came so close to death that he wonders whether the experience has transformed him in a fundamental way.
'My mother is religious, so she has her own interpretation of what happened,' he says, sitting at home in Chennai, his body marked with fine red slashes, as if he had been attacked by a mad tattoo artist. 'But I know it will take me some time before I figure this one out.'
Mr Kuruvilla, 54, had set off early in the morning to an estuary just south of Chennai to do some angling. It was a beautiful, clear day. After a couple of hours, he remembers standing in waist-deep water, the line fully stretched, hoping bigger fish would bite, when the tsunami hit.
'This wall of water came at me with astonishing speed, but without a sound,' he recalls. 'Instinctively, I dived in, expecting as usual to come out as the wave broke. But it pulled me down with tremendous force to the rocky base of the estuary, giving me a knock on the head. Fortunately, I didn't pass out.
'Almost as quickly, the pressure eased, but as I came up for air I realised I was being pulled as rapidly out to sea. I grabbed a bramble bush, and even as I was being lashed by its thorns, I could see other bushes snapping off and getting swept away by the water.
