Residents of the western Indian city of Bhuj today remembered the 20,000 people who died in an earthquake which struck a year ago today.
Many students and shopkeepers stayed at home out of respect to the victims of the country's deadliest quake in a half-century.
The Kutch district, the hardest hit by the disaster, observed two minutes of silence at 8.46 a.m. (3.16 Irish time) to mourn those killed by the earthquake, which registered 7.9 on the Richter scale and left another 160,000 people injured.
Some people offered spontaneous prayers for the dead on the streets, but most residents of this still traumatised district chose to mourn at home, where many still feel the crippling economic effects of the quake that damaged five billion dollars worth of property.
The disaster also cast a pall over ceremonies for India's Republic Day today, with the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat using a ceremony for the national holiday to defend the government's record on helping the victims.
"The pace of work is not slow and will not be slowed. Even the industrial belts are coming back to normalcy," Chief Minister Narendra Modi told a crowd of several hundred.
Thousands of schoolchildren stayed at home, with many of them still hesitant to speak of what happened here a year ago.
The government, along with other non-governmental organisations is reconstructing more than 400,000 houses.
Many quake victims have been left angry, however, by what they see as the slow pace of compensations and allege discrimination in the rehabilitation work.
But government officials say it will take at least three years before the worst hit areas here come back to any level of normality.
Authorities are hoping to ensure that new constructions are earthquake-resistant to prevent another human toll on the scale of last year's disaster.
AFP