'God, please send my brother back to me'
For the past year, every night before going to bed, little Muhammad Thanveer sits on a special prayer. He takes his notebook and with a red sketch pen he scrolls: 'I love Thalha. God, please send my brother Thalha back to me.' He repeats it 100 times, filling up two pages of his notebook every night.
With similar unfailing regularity, Thanveer's grandfather, M. Gul Muhammad Saith, a retired businessman, has been offering namaaz two or three times more than the usual five-times-a-day routine. In each of his long prayers, he has been praying for Thalha's return.
For the past year, all adult members of the family have been observing special fasting every Friday and longer prayers for Thalha, who escaped the tsunami but went missing minutes afterwards.
'I don't have a son and so I groomed my brother's sons as mine. And, Thalha was a very special child. We cannot accept that he is not alive,' said Gul Muhammad Umar Farouq, Thalha's uncle.
That fateful Sunday morning, Gul Muhammad Safiullah - Mr Saith's younger son - took his wife and three sons to a beach in Cuddalore, 400km away from their inland hill resort town of Uthagamandalam.
His wife and two sons - Thanveer, seven, and Bilal, one - were taking a stroll on the beach. At a distance, the father of the children stood by their car with three-year-old Thalha sleeping in his arms.
As soon as Mr Safiullah caught sight of the giant wave, he put Thalha inside the car and ran towards the sea to drag his wife and two sons to safety. But before he could reach them, all four on the beach were knocked down by the sea.
The killer sea took the lives of the Safiullah couple and their youngest son. Thanveer, who managed to float on with a wooden plank, was rescued by fishermen.
Thalha was rescued by police from the car that had been washed away and was sent to a hospital. But Thalha could not tell police his telephone number or address, so police were unable to register his contact details. Then he went missing.
In the past year, Thalha's uncle has combed all the coastal villages of Tamil Nadu and almost all nearby cities and towns of Tamil Nadu state. Private detective agencies were equally ineffective.
Cuddalore's police chief insisted he was certain he had rescued Thalha and sent him to the Cuddalore hospital. 'I guess somehow in the melee he was taken away by someone from the hospital. I think someone secretly took him into his or her home and the pretty child is growing amidst love and affection.'
As he has been doing every day for the past year, Mr Saith bought a chocolate and kept it in his pocket yesterday morning. 'Every day Thalha would ask for this chocolate. I know he is alive and Allah may send him to me any moment. So I am keeping the chocolate ready for him.'
