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Excerpt: What were their names?Image of children shakes reporterBy Satinder Bindra Editor"s Note: CNN New Delhi Bureau Chief Satinder Bindra was in Colombo, Sri Lanka, when the tsunami struck on December 26 and spent the next three weeks covering the disaster. Inspired by the courage of a 9-year-old boy who lost his mother, Bindra has written a book, "Tsunami: Seven Hours that Shook the World." These are select excerpts from the book.  Grant on discovering the three young bodies: "In those moments, you stop being a reporter." RELATED
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It was a difficult task fraught with danger and uncertainty, but it had to be done and the assignment went to CNN's China correspondent Stan Grant, who had arrived in Colombo in the early morning hours of 29 December. That same morning itself and with no rest at all, Stan and crew took off on a 10-hour drive to the north and managed to convince the rebels to take them to the hardest hit area of Mullaitivu. When they got there, a visibly shaken Stan noted: "Nothing could prepare me for what I would see. I've been to Hiroshima and seen the museum, the complete demolition; it reminded me of that. All the trees had vanished and buildings and roads had been washed away. "The rebel forces were collecting bodies everywhere, there were bodies in bushes, in trees, and they were dredging bodies out of the flood water, getting as many as they could for cremation." In comparison to the chaos of the south, Stan noticed rebel forces were disciplined and organized. "After having gone through years of war, the Tamil Tigers knew how to dispose of bodies. And were fairly unsentimental about it." Everywhere that Stan looked he noticed a complete absence of life. "There were no birds singing. There was stillness, emptiness, and eeriness. Things had been just obliterated. I saw nothing but bodies." What was particularly difficult to deal with was the number of dead children and babies. "They were completely helpless against the waves and were scattered across the landscape. "To see them lifeless on such a scale was quite something. I imagined what life must have been like before the tsunami and visualized children playing in a church, which had had a service on the morning of 26 December. To have seen that area once full of life and then in its current state was astounding." As Stan tried to come to terms with what was happening around him, he saw three dead children, aged perhaps between one and three. "From a distance, it just really didn't look real. They looked almost like mannequins or dolls. But as we got closer, I saw that their arms were locked around each other. They were clinging onto each other. Their bodies had been tossed in the torrent as it came through. Somehow, these three little kids had stuck together and died together. "In those moments, you stop being a reporter. The tools of our trade, the objectivity and the distance that we need to be able to do our job effectively in most cases desert you. Being a reporter just isn't enough anymore. I remember standing there, looking, and I couldn't help thinking about my own children. I have three little boys of my own. "And I know I look in on them sometimes before they are about to go to bed, and they are often lying there and they have their arms around each other. Looking at these three little children, with their arms around each other, reminded me so much of my own kids. And I started thinking about the little things that matter. I wondered: Where were the parents? Who was there to grieve for these kids? Who was going to remember them? What were their names? "As I stood there, I actually started to broadcast live on my phone into one of the programmes and Richard Quest, one of our London anchors, was on the other end of the line. As I was speaking to him, a bulldozer came through and lifted up those three bodies. Tamil relief workers stacked the wood about a metre or so high and placed these bodies on the funeral pyre. I remember standing there, live on air, describing this scene, and realized I had to reach for something more intimate to show what I was dealing with. "That required something more than just journalism. I had to expose my own frailties. I dropped the veil of professionalism; I had to connect the stories of these kids with the people of other nations. I felt the need to be human. These kids had names, they laughed and played just like mine. "I related them to my own kids, to give dignity and humanity to them. It wasn't something that came easily because we were trained to hide our own feelings. But I realized there was no way to tell such a story with distance and detachment; I had to be personal and real. I had to feel this as a father, a son, a husband, not just as a journalist." 
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