NAGAPPATTINAM, India -- To save his only son, Vijay Kumar hugged the boy as hard as he could. But in the struggle against the horrific power of the waves, that last embrace just wasn't enough.

Kumar fought hard. He refused to let the first wave take 3-year-old Rajaraman when it lifted the pair to the height of a two-story building and whirled them around.

He wouldn't let go when the wave bashed father and screaming child against snapped trees, tumbling chunks of concrete and other debris as they tried to keep their heads above the choking dark water.

But then the tsunami dropped them as quickly as it had snatched them and something wooden, a tree or a piece of a smashed boat, hit Kumar hard in the back.

The force of the sudden blow threw open his arms. The water pulled Rajaraman away and down into a roiling torrent, and all his father could do was watch the terrified face of his son as the boy disappeared.

Yesterday, Kumar still had not found his son's body, so there cannot be a burial, a proper goodbye. And a father's heart is as empty as the menacing ocean is deep.

"What else is there left in life? I have lost my son," he wept outside the ruins of his home in the port area of this southern Indian city. "My God, what did we do wrong to lose him?"

At least 2,000 people died in this city Sunday morning when three waves struck, tossing dozens of fishing trawlers around like playthings, dropping one upside down on the pedestrian bridge that joins two parts of the port.

The waves rolled hundreds of yards up the street leading into the port's customs compound, leaving dozens of corpses in the middle of the road. Volunteers who helped collect the bodies said they found several dead women clutching the corpses of small children.

Hundreds of bodies were still believed buried under the sand along the city's beaches yesterday, and the stench of death filled the air. Many of residents wore surgical masks, hoping to ward off the sickly sweet smell.

More than half the dead were children, and burial teams continued to pile their corpses in mass graves yesterday, mainly alongside women and the elderly. These people were too weak to hold on or were slammed against walls or heavy debris.

Unable to save his son, Kumar struggled to keep together the rest of his family.

"I could only hold onto my wife and daughter, and we were thrown about 300 yards before we formed a chain with other adults to hold onto anything sturdy," he said.

Kumar's wife was seriously injured and hospitalized. But their 18-month-old daughter, Bhakiyalakshmi, was small enough for him to hold tightly like a ball and not let go. She and her grandmother may soon be all that is left of Kumar's family.