Time seemed to have frozen. In many places, the inspection team saw only broken walls and debris lying around, and they saw no sign of reconstruction work.

Someone once said that India is like a woman in a traditional Indian sari. The north, which borders China and Pakistan, is the head; the southern peninsula surrounded by the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal looks like legs wrapped in a sari; the northeastern states extending to the Himalayas form her left hand, and the desert and swamp areas in the west are like the right hand resting on her hip.

Like the sari, India is dazzling and amazing, but it is also a country filled with sorrow. India now has a population of one billion, the second largest in the world. Sadly, roughly a third of Indians are on the verge of existence, living from one meal to the next.

On January 26, 2001, a corner of this beautiful country was torn apart by a major earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale. Indian officials estimated that at least 20,000 people died in the quake.

A person saved by "sunshine"

The effects of this major earthquake have attracted world-wide attention, but because India didn't request international assistance, foreign relief goods had no way of getting in.

Two months after the earthquake, with the help of CARE, an internationally renowned charity organization, Tzu Chi was able to send a fact-finding team to the disaster areas. On April 2, Stephen Huang and Hsieh Ching-kuei from Tzu Chi headquarters in Hualien and Brother Liu Chi-yu from the Tzu Chi Malaysia branch flew to Bombay, India. From there they flew to the most badly hit area, Bhuj, in the state of Gujarat in northwest India.

Pierre-Yves Scotto, a CARE representative, led the Tzu Chi team to CARE's makeshift office, set up in the open. The investigation team had very little luggage and slept in a six-man tent that night with CARE staff.

The next day, as the sun shone warmly on the city, twenty people were on their knees in a nearby tent. Some nuns were leading church members and earthquake survivors in prayer.

As the team drove through the disaster areas, all they saw was fallen houses and simple tents. Women in saris became the only sign of hope.

In the city of Bhuj, the closest to the epicenter, more than 17,000 out of a population of 80,000 died. Since there were no excavators or other heavy machinery available in the city, the residents had to use shovels, hammers or sticks to clear away the debris. The team saw a woman using a metal basin to clear away rubble. Many residents had to use difficult traditional methods to rebuild their homes.

There was a shop with many sets of drinking glasses on the shelves. The manager and his son each had a red spot on his forehead, indicating they were Hindus. We asked them why their cups hadn't been damaged by the quake. The manager replied that they had indeed all been destroyed, but that he had not despaired. He had immediately ordered new glasses for sale. Business was only a fraction of what it had been, but the smile from this optimistic manager made a deep impression on the team members.

On their way to Anjar, another hard-hit area, the team passed through Kotda, a village of 425 families, where they saw that more than ninety percent of the houses had been destroyed. There were only broken walls and debris lying around, and they saw no sign of reconstruction work.

Lakhani, an ordinary cement craftsman, came to be known as "the person saved by sunshine." Lakhani told us that he was drinking tea when the earthquake struck and he was buried under the rubble. The bright day suddenly became pitch black.

Lakhani couldn't see or hear anything. Time seemed to have frozen. He drew himself up into a ball and stayed in this position for four days, without food or water. The four days seemed to go on forever.

Then suddenly--perhaps it was a blessing from heaven or just an accident--someone kicked away some debris and dim light shone into the darkness. Judging the direction of the light, he was able to use all his remaining strength to break through the debris and miraculously free himself.

Of course, Lakhani's inadvertent savior had long gone. When asked who saved him, Lakhani didn't know how to answer, so he simply said "sunlight."

Each refugee who walked past us must have had a fascinating story like this lucky one.

Water crisis

A demographer with the United Nations pointed out that India's population had surpassed one billion, next only to mainland China. Every year 25 million babies are born in India, a figure greater than the total population of Taiwan.

Information from the World Bank shows that 300 million Indians live under the poverty line, earning less than US$1 per day. Poverty also prevents 50 million children from attending school. Close to 500 million people around the world are illiterate, and half of them are Indians.

What foreign visitors to India complain about the most are the homeless street children who are seen everywhere. Some street children surrounded the car our team was in. Stephen Huang felt pity for them, so he took out some snacks from his pockets, and in just a few seconds many small hands were fighting each other to grab them.

Gujarat is ranked the second most industrialized state in India. Only four percent of the national population lives here, but it produces twenty percent of the GNP, which makes it one of the most economically prosperous states in India.

Before the earthquake hit, the state was already facing a drought problem. Although the government had drilled many wells that brought underground water to the villages, most water was either absorbed by the soil or evaporated along the way. Not much was left for the residents.

Some people said that if the water problem could be solved, half of the poverty-related problems in India would disappear. The drought in India is a major concern for international humanitarian organizations. The United Nations Population Fund once said that water is the most important element in judging living conditions. The underground water level was descending, and that would cause long-term problems.

As the government was preparing to fight against the drought problem, the earthquake changed the problem from bad to worse.

Local women had to spend eight hours a day retrieving water. The city government sent out trucks with drinking water to villages in the disaster areas.

The two-year drought had left farmers without a single drop of water to irrigate their fields. After the earthquake, they had to depend on the women's weaving to supplement their income. Many men thus had nothing to do except relax under luxuriant bodhi trees to stay cool.

No matter how much water the team members drank, they still felt thirsty. The thermometer on Hsieh Ching-kuei's watch pointed to 38 degrees Celsius [100.4 F], so it was fortunate that they had each stacked several bottles of drinking water in their bags, ready to fight against the Indian heat. Their blue shirts became damp with sweat, and then dried out again in the sunlight. Fortunately it was hot but not humid, as no one had a shower for three days.

Cooperating with CARE

Set up just after World War II, CARE now has ten international agencies around the world and is carrying out more than six hundred projects in seventy countries.

This organization has been helping the poor in India for fifty years, and currently has five hundred staff members there. The day after the earthquake CARE sent members to the disaster areas, and for two months twenty to thirty special project workers collected information on the areas and wrote down reconstruction plans for thirty villages. They estimated the work would cost US$33 million.

Because of its association with CARE, the Tzu Chi team was also surrounded by people everywhere it went. Local people helped the team understand the real situation of the disaster. They didn't know much about Tzu Chi, but they trusted CARE.

Pushpa has been working for CARE for twenty years. Her name means "lotus flower," so when she saw the lotus flower emblem on the Tzu Chi flag, she was able to say that it meant "rising above the muck and mire of the swamp." She told us that it was like her work for the refugees, although she didn't see it as hard work.

Linguistic situations in India are very complicated as there are thousands of dialects. The villagers all spoke in dialect, so the fact-finding team needed help from accompanying translators to understand them.

One day the work was finished at around seven and Tzu Chi members were ready to have supper. Hsieh invited a CARE project chief to have supper with the team. He politely replied that he would do so later. He waited until his colleagues came back and then had supper with them at some time past ten. They ate and talked about their work till midnight.

At seven the next morning, someone was already checking his e-mail while brushing his teeth. They had started another day of work.

The Tzu Chi team was deeply touched by the dedication of these CARE members. Hsieh remarked, "For us it was a three-day investigation, but for them it was long-term work."

Hsieh wondered what had led these CARE workers to a tough place like India. He believed that they truly cared about the refugees, so they were willing to stay and help. According to him, it was a noble religious feeling--a devotion to sacrifice oneself and not to make any distinctions among religions--that allowed them to help the refugees without hesitation.

The rainy season

The rainy season in India starts in June, but much of the cleanup work, not to mention reconstruction, hasn't been finished yet. The Tzu Chi team found that cracks on most houses extended diagonally at a 45-degree angle, indicating serious damage to the structure of the houses. However, many villagers said that they would just paste cement over the cracks so that the houses would seem to have been repaired.

More than seven thousand schools were damaged in the earthquake, and students in the disaster areas have still not returned to their classrooms. CARE plans to build makeshift classrooms with woven bamboo so that the classrooms will be better ventilated. They will place plastic sheets between woven bamboo sections on the rooftops to keep the rain from coming through.

Tzu Chi will join CARE in its reconstruction work, and will focus on the village of Kotda as its first priority. After gaining a better understanding of the situation in India, Master Cheng Yen said that if necessary Tzu Chi would provide heavy-duty machinery to help speed up the cleanup work. The foundation would also ship prefabricated classrooms that had been used for schools damaged in the earthquake of September 21, 1999, in Taiwan.

The funds needed for the reconstruction project in India will be raised by our Malaysian branch. Liu Chi-yu, executive officer of the Tzu Chi Malaysia branch, went to India with the fact-finding team. He commented that the reconstruction plan for every village should include new houses and community centers, agricultural assistance, education, livelihood planning, sanitation, and nutrition.

Liu will host a series of charity performances and bazaars to raise the money. He also plans to station members of the Tzu Chi Collegiate Youth Association in India on a long-term basis to help with the reconstruction work and to learn from their experiences with CARE.