"There is no-one at home to go back to."

Antony had been married for 17 years and still struggles to come to terms with his loss. "My wife used to wait for me every day with a cup of tea when I would come in from the sea," he says, his eyes brimming with tears. Observers say the trauma of losing their wives has left a deep psychological scar on these men, and many of them are quite simply unable to cope. "The question of family formation has been deeply affected. In these social set ups, it is the woman who runs the family as a unit," says Professor Sivathambi, a Tamil scholar at Colombo University: Loss of women haunts fishermen: BBC Dilemma of the disproportionately high percentage tsunami widowers: "How do we face the future?"