Eyewitness account: It was a dream holiday that turned into a nightmare within seconds. Pallab Paul and four family members were strolling along Marina Beach, just south of Chennai, when they heard a roar.
As they turned around, they were engulfed by a mass of water that surged over their heads.
They had no time to react before being swept out to sea. "It was the first full day of our Christmas holiday and we had headed to the beach before breakfast," said Mr Paul, an accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in the southern city of Bangalore.
"There were five of us, my wife and I, our daughter and my parents. We were walking back up the beach towards our car when suddenly there was this rushing sound behind us. Before we knew it, we were swimming for our lives.
"Some people are saying that it was one huge wave. But in fact there was a series of four waves, crashing on to the shore one after the other. Some people eventually pulled us out. But my mother was washed away".
A distraught Mr Paul and his wife, Ratna, had arrived yesterday afternoon to identify the body of his mother at the General Hospital in Chennai.
Inside the old colonial building, dozens of bodies had been laid out on the floor of the mortuary and adjacent rooms.They lay four abreast, men, women and children. Their clothes were sodden and covered with sand.
Nearby in the forecourt of the hospital, a group of women sat on the ground, crying and talking to one another. One of them told how she had lost her daughter, a fisherman's wife on Marina Beach. "She was cleaning and selling his catch," said Dasarani, "when suddenly the big waves hit the shore.
"We were in the market. We heard this crashing sound and saw the water coming towards us.
"The first wave was as high as a building. I knew my daughter Arul was on the beach.
"I started screaming and running, but the water came right in. It carried her away. I have only just identified her body. What is going to become of her two young children?"
There were hundreds of people at the time on Marina Beach, famed locally as the second-longest beach in the world after Miami, Florida.
Most of those on the strand at the time the tidal waves hit were fisherfolk. But there were also holiday-makers, joggers and young men playing cricket. All were caught unawares.
"As far as we know, no foreign tourists were caught in the disaster on this coast," said Mr Ravathi Ramanujam, a representative of the British High Commission in Chennai last night.
"But a lot of foreigners come to stay in resorts along the coast, so we cannot be totally sure."
The death toll in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu is believed to be in the thousands. With its temperate climate and beautiful coastline, the state is a popular destination for holiday-makers during the European winter.
Inside the mortuary of the general hospital in Chennai, Mr Ranjit Singh crouched over the body of his dead wife on the floor. Apart from a small trickle of blood from her nose, there was no blemish on her face.
"I had come to do gym exercises on the beach," said the grieving Mr Singh. "My wife and children were sitting on the strand when the waves came. The second the water rushed in, she threw my son to some people further up the beach and he was saved. Ranu was washed out to sea. I have only just found her. The children do not know yet."
It was the same in other hospitals: hundreds of stricken relatives and friends clustered around the gates. Inside, dozens of bodies laid out on cold slabs, their clothing in disarray.
"I lost my sister," said a crying woman called Algarasi. "She was selling her husband's fish on the beach when the water came."
Tamil Nadu is the worst-affected state in India, though hundreds of people were also killed by the tidal waves in the state of Andhra Pradesh. It will take many days before the final death toll and the full extent of the damage are known. The beaches all along the east Indian coast are strewn with wrecked fishing boats and the belongings of those washed out to sea.