The tsunami triggered by an undersea megathrust earthquake of a virtually unheard of 9.1 on the Richter scale washed way thousands of people and their homes along the coasts of Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia and Thailand.
The Coromandel Coast, southwards from Chennai up to Kanyakumari, experienced the worst impact. The passage of a decade has not healed all the scars.
Fear persists and those whose livelihoods lie in the sea are still psychologically stressed. Key bureaucrats showed exemplary courage in the face of adversity when working to provide immediate relief in 2004.
However, questions remain whether successive governments have done enough to rebuild the lives of the lakhs of fishermen affected in the intervening 10 years.
A huge amount of public spending and NGO funding was put into tsunami housing but the aid was unevenly spread, leaving many dissatisfied.
The tsunami showed what preparedness to tackle calamities really means. It also showed that the effect of tidal waves could be even more devastating wherever there was environmental degradation.
Far from attempting to rebuild the coast with natural surf breakers and moving vulnerable populations at least a few hundred metres away from the coastline, man has only moved back to near the sea, with real estate developers around Chennai the worst offenders.
Having lost an estimated 18,000 people, with about 6.5 lakh displaced, the need to be better prepared in the face of a greater frequency of stronger earthquakes is vital.
Otherwise we would be guilty of not having learnt anything from one of the worst natural disasters in living memory.
