Rapidly Growing Story

As Thanksgiving is closing in and as the semester is nearing its conclusion, I feel pressure to get my project completed. I didn't write as rapidly as I should have. I also could not stick to 3 hours a day rule for the month of November. Constant need to check back to sources to confirm some part of the story made the writing slow. There were times when I sat to write but ended up spending two hours looking for news articles and videos to confirm that I was writing validated experience of the quake. Even though I'm writing a fiction, I'm basing it on the reality. Therefore, I can't make up my own reality on entirety. For example, Nepal's earthquake measured 7.9 in Richter Scale. I can't write in my story that it was 8.9. Nor can fabricate the cases of devastation. It's all fact and the world knows it. Therefore, writing rapidly has not been quite possible. Still I'm devoting hours and hours into it and I'm quite happy that I've been so much immersed into this project.

Here I present some additional excerpts from my manuscript:

....The news of persons rescued alive from crumbled buildings keeps spreading. This adds hope in me. There do exist the cases of miraculous survivals.

I have to go find my girls, wherever they are, in whatever situation they are. But this is an alien land. I’m a foreigner. I don’t know their language. I don’t know the geography. I need a guide. I need a pathfinder.  

I call Binod. He says he can’t go because “hills are falling; paths are blocked; hotels are closed; and quake has been recurring.”

I call a few other contacts and ask if they can find a Nepali guide for me. They ask for an hour. I start packing things up. If I find nobody, I’ll go alone. I can’t sit here in safety when my sweethearts’ fates are unknown.  I’m the one who is responsible for their safeguarding.

An hour…..another powerful jolt is felt on the earth. The contacts call back saying, they are trying but nobody is willing to go. Everybody is scared. Some of the guides have died and others have been injured. Many have lost their own near and dear ones. The death toll has already counted more than 8000. And it’s growing.

At a point I feel anger. I feel anger on myself, for not being able to protect my wife and daughter, for not taking care of them, for letting them on their own in this alien land. My personal ambition of scaling Mount Everest was the reason I abandoned them. If I had been together with them, we would have survived together or died together.

And I feel anger on this alien land. This land has eluded my dreams and looted my happiness. What a curse this land is! If my wife and daughter don’t turn in alright, I can’t forgive this country. These feelings, I know, are irrational but I was not this vulnerable back home. I never felt this helpless in the United States.

Natural disasters can’t be stopped, fine, but the Himalayan region was already known as one of the most tectonically unstable regions of the world. A major quake would hit any moment. Yet they didn’t do anything about houses. They let the people build weak structures. They didn’t prepare for a disaster. They let poverty rule here. Or whatever.

And all of a sudden, I receive a call from the embassy. A female voice says, “It turns out, your wife and your daughter were not in the Langtang valley when the earthquake hit. Your daughter had suffered from sudden attack  of altitude sickness and in the evening of April 24, she was brought to Kathmandu in a helicopter. Your wife accompanied her.”

WHAT?

Is it true?

The voice says, “Yes. This is a confirmed news. Your daughter was then taken to B&B Hospital. After some care in hospital, she improved significantly and both of them were taken to Hyatt Hotel, which is near Bauddha Stupa.”

That is all the information that they have.

All of the sudden, my hope resurges. The US embassy offers me a ride to Hyatt. Yes, indeed, Linda and Jessica stayed in one of the suites at Hyatt on the night before the quake. However, they had checked out early in the morning.

Now, that’s absurd. Where might have they gone after that?

However, one of the Hyatt staffs tell us this: “Linda had the plan to fly back to Langtang Valley and continue her trek. Jessica, on the other hand, was to stay in Kathmandu. Before the two parted, they wanted to visit a church and pray. They exited in one of our shuttle cabs.”

The staff looks up in the computer and makes a few calls and says, “ Jessica and Linda were dropped off at Kapan. There’s a famous church in a seven storied building. They probably attended there.”  

We drive back to the embassy. They say they need this vehicle for some more urgent matter. But that’s fine because I have the bicycle. However, fortunately, the embassy staff offers to send a Nepali guide with me.

The Nepali guide, named Nabin, is ready on his bicycle. I ask how old he is. He says he is 20. I ask if his family is safe. He says, “Nobody is safe in this city”, then adds, “My house is in one of the villages in Gorkha, near the epicenter of the April 25 quake. My grandmother, who was 80, died when our house there crumbled. One of my aunts with her 6 months baby was rescued. The aunt is critically injured but she covered the infant with her body and saved him.”

“What about uncle?”

Nabin says, “He works in Qatar, like millions of Nepalese. He is probably coming to Nepal, for last rituals of grandmother.”

“What about your parents?”

“My mom has gone to the village. I have no dad. He used to be a soldier. He got killed during Maoist war. I was very small at that time.”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“Yes I do. In Nepal, usually everyone has at least one sibling. I’ve got two sisters.”

“Do you have house in Kathmandu?”

He says, “No, we have rented two small rooms. But the house is now fractured. It’s not safe to live there. But we can’t find any rooms to rent at this time. We’re living under tent.”

I would want to ask more questions. But then, I have my own problems.

He asks, “Was there some relative of your in that Church?”

I say, “Probably.”

He says, “But I think there were no survivors in that building.”

“What? The church  collapsed?”

He says, “I’m sorry. But many churches have collapsed throughout the city. Because Saturday is the national holiday in Nepal, Christians meet and pray on Saturdays. Christians were praying in churches when the earthquake hit. Maybe a thousand, I don’t know.”

My heart throbs. I ask, “No survivors?”

He says, “I’m sorry, but this particular church was in fifth or sixth storey of a seven storied building. I don’t have the exact information. The building was the tallest in the neighborhood.”

I feel tornado within me.

He says, “But I don’t think any foreigners were killed there.”

I say, “My wife and daughter were in the church.”

He says, “But I don’t know. We’ve almost arrived. We can talk to the locals.”

We arrive at the site. There is a huge, I mean very huge, pile of rubble. I ask, “Nabin, how many died in this building?”

He says, “I’m not sure. Maybe 100. Maybe more. Or less. I don’t know. But I’m sure many died, especially in the church. This is a popular church in the area.”

There is a row of tents a few minutes away. As we walk towards the tents, a woman with a three kids following her, approaches. She says, “Hello sir. Namaste.”

I say, “Namaste.”

She asks Nabin something in Nepali. Nabin answers to her and turns to me, “She’s asking if you are here to donate them something.”

I look at the woman. She looks dirty. Her kids look dirtier. She looks at me and smiles.

Nabin says, “I’m sorry but people normally see foreigners as people who are able and willing to give them something….maybe because the government is doing nothing to them in this time of disaster. Many things have fallen apart. Maybe even hope has fallen apart. We are, you know, a fallen nation.”

How to respond? What a quagmire!

As Nabin explains to her something, she looks at me with sympathy. Then she takes us to the tented area where dozens of people surround us out of nowhere.

Again how to respond at that situation?

As Nabin talks to some people, one teenage girl comes forward and says, “Sir, I was in the church when the earthquake happened. But I didn’t really notice any foreigners. But again, there were many people in the church and we can’t see all. Maybe your family were there at the time, or maybe not.”

If this girl was there and she survived, then I was assured that some people made it. I ask, “Were there more survivors?”

She says, “Yes there were.”

I sit, grab her gently, look at her on her eyes, and ask, “Can you explain me what happened there?”

She says, “Yes, it was  horrific. It was very frightening”, she tries to recall, “We were praying when we felt the vibrations on the floor. When the vibration grew, I opened my eyes. I saw people in the left and right. They were still closing their eyes. I looked at the father, who looked back at me, and gestured to close my eyes. But all of the sudden, the cracking sounds and screams from the whole neighborhood were heard. The trembling became violent. And I stood up. Others stood up too. Everyone was scared.

- Sanjay Chhetri

For Shaken Earth & Fallen Marine

[Images extracted from Google Images

Work on progress

Finally, my work is on satisfactory progress. Even though tons of assignments, on-campus work, and other inevitable distractions are still there, I'm writing. I think I can get the whole manuscript done by the Thanksgiving. Then I may have Thanksgiving break to review and edit. By that time, I should probably decide on how I approach a publisher and which publisher(s) to approach. Again, I have TED talk to prepare, which should not be hard as far as I get my book written. I'll present my experience of the whole Idea Lab project, but from a perspective which might be useful as well as appealing to the audience. 

Writing has always been fulfilling to me, but I can't deny the fact that it's highly challenging too. It might not be a perfect one, but it'll still be a beautiful one. Here's an excerpt of my progressing draft of "Shaken Earth & Fallen Marine": 

.........About four minutes to the noon, I feel some movement beneath my feet. The movement grows violent and it almost has me tripped. The tents shake; and so does the mountain. I almost lose the balance of my camera. An uproar is heard: "Run! Run!" The whole mountain I am filming starts to shake as if it's going to overturn right at the moment. I see some snow balls and boulders rolling down. I see people running. I hear someone scream, "Mike, Run! It's the earthquake!" Suddenly, amid this utterly unexpected chaos, I see on the screen of my shaking camera a huge, I mean really huge, cloud of snow covering the whole view of the sky. From about a hundred meters on the cliff, the whole sky-covering size of snow is falling rapidly towards us. It's when I shout, "Get away! Get away! The avalanche is falling upon us!", and I run. I run as fast as possible. I see nothing, nobody. I reflexively know that in the matter of three or four seconds, the whole giga mass of snow will reach us. I reflexively know that it's unstoppable! I reflexively know  that it's here to claim our lives. I reflexively know that it's merciless!

Yes, in four seconds, a huge chunk of snow falls upon me. It slams on my head and on my back.  I fall. There's a significant mass of snow on top of me. I struggle. I shrug. I feel the cold. I feel the wound and fresh blood off my head. But I know I'm not dead.

In fact, I know I can move. I try to get back up. I can't. There's really a lot of snow on top of me. I move my  hands, and push away the snow around my head. I see that there is white all over.  All the colorful tents are gone. It's all white now.  

Several minutes of my frantic but helpless effort to get myself back up continue. Some human sounds are heard around. I shout, "Here! Here!"

Two Sherpas arrive. They say, " Mike, are you okay?" I say, "Yes, just get me up." The two remove some snow and pull me up. I can't stand on my own. I yell, "Damn! My legs are frozen. Or are they paralyzed?"

The two quickly carry me away. My legs are immobile. I don't feel them. I ask, "How many of them  are covered under there?" They say, "We don't know. It could be many." I remember that panic. While I saw the falling tsunami of snow through my camera, most of them were still unknown about it. It was when I shouted and ran that they looked up and started to run. A second before I was hit, I saw several of them just starting to run. No doubt, many could not escape. I was only hit by the tip of the avalanche. Had I lagged behind by two seconds, I would be several feet below the snow. At worst, I may have my legs paralyzed. It's quite a luck compared to the fate several others have met. What a narrow escape!

My saviors, the two Sherpas, sit me gently on a boulder and rush back. They join the others in digging the snow and retrieving the bodies. Some are alive, some are dead, some are dying. There are some who are either alive or dead. How I wish I could join them to dig. These damn legs! Then I remember, "Where's my camera?"

Then, all of the sudden, my cold blood heats up: Oh hell! This is an earthquake! What about Linda and Jessica? The earthquake must have rocked the entire region. How do I know?

My heart beats up. I feel very strangely terrified. My wife Linda and my 12-year old daughter Jessica were in a trek to Langtang Mountain valley. The earthquake was scarily big. It must have hit there, too. Houses might have crumbled. Other avalanches might have broken off. Image of devastation in my mind forms so big that I believe the whole country of Nepal, and probably the whole of China and India, might have shaken. Or who knows, the entire earth might have rocked. Didn't I see with my own eyes the biggest mountain of the world shaking so badly that it almost crumbled then and there? It was in the true sense the end of the world at that moment.

I pray that nothing happens to my beloved ones.

I have seen nothing as scary as this in my entire life.......

- Sanjay Chhetri

For the book "Shaken Earth & Fallen Marine. 

[Pictures used from google.com/images] 

Taking Off

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. - Napolean Hill

I can't believe this is really happening. 

When I declared my project one and a half month ago, I was really not sure if I really meant to do it. Then followed a prolonged period of trying to figure out how I could possibly make it happen. As of today, I know it's indeed happening. 

The progress of my project

The breakthrough is I've finally come up with the idea of the content of the book. I now know that it's going to be a fictional depiction of Nepal's earthquake. Having said fictional, I don't mean I'm entirely making it up. In order to engage the readers, I must weave a story out of the whole earthquake experience because nobody might find it awesome to read 200 pages of descriptive essay on Nepal's earthquake. 

Picture source: https://play.google.com/store/books/

Now I know the plot of the story. I know how the story begins and develops. I know how it ends. 

Even better news is that I've already started to write the manuscript. 

Because I don't think it's a good idea to post the whole manuscript on the blog, I have decided to write the whole story on google docs. I have chosen google docs over Microsoft Word so that I don't have to depend on my unreliable laptop. My favorite place to write is the library and I can use the desktops on the lab. Writing on desktop, I've found, is more physically comfortable than writing on laptop. So far, I've only gone a few pages. Because my aim is to get the complete manuscript drafted by the end of November 2015, I must write at least 10 pages daily. This way, I'll have 200 pages of the book in 20 days remaining of November. 30th of November is my birthday and it's going to be kind of a birthday present to myself. 

For quite sometime, adapting to the US life posed challenges. I could not focus on this highly demanding project for a lot of time. Maybe I slipped in time management. Maybe I was worried about a lot of things. Maybe I was not quite prepared for the enormity of this project. As a result, the project didn't take the leap it should have taken. 

Next to the keyboard lies a bulky book titled "Writer's Market 2016". Professor Szabo, who encouraged me to take this project, recommended me to consult this book in order to understand how I may contact the publisher(s) in the United States. I've slightly looked into the book and I believe it really is going to be of help. Professor has trusted me and has been counting on me. This is really a big drive for me to get the project accomplished. 

This is going to be a life-changing experience writing the book and getting it published and thus making an impact.   

The Seed of the Story

SHAKEN EARTH & FALLEN MARINE

Finally, the project takes off. After more than a month of enigma, I've put together all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. All my contents and contexts fit in to this fictional plot based on the true circumstances of the Nepal earthquake 2015. It covers all the major happenings as well as subtle effects from the perspective of one who was there to feel the acute destruction and suffering brought about by the quake, while on the same time making it feel closer to the American experience, as it's the narrative of an American. This story, while giving me the advantages of fictional play, depicts very honestly the disaster exactly as it happened.  

Mike, 40. a US citizen, visits Nepal with his wife, Linda, 37, and daughter, Jessica, 12. A documentary filmmaker, he wants to scale Mount Everest and make a documentary of the most challenging deed of his life. His wife and  daughter, however, set out for trekking to Langtang mountain valley. 

Buried under snow as avalanche swept the base camp in Everest

At 11:56 am on April 25, the 7.8 Richter Scale earthquake rocked the Himalayas. The whole giant mass of snow fell out of nowhere. The entire area got buried, with tents and people under the piles of snow. Some escaped. Most couldn't. Some got slightly injured, but altogether 24 died. 
Mike was one of the few who saw the avalanche jumping in. He shouted and ran. A marginal end of ice mass hit him on his head, and knocked him down. He was lucky. Others were pressed by tons of snow on top of them. They suffocated in cold and died in minutes. Mike, however, got back up, grabbed his broken camera, and limped in wound and blood. 

The bunch of survivors, scared to death, tried to figure out what had just happened. Then, they started to dig into the snow and rubble to retrieve and rescue the men and women buried there. However, all of them had already died. 
There was no connection of telephone and Mike started to get worried about Linda and Jessica. He was yet to know what had happened in rest of the country or rest of the region hit by the quake. With injuries in his bones growing severely painful, he, along with others in the expedition, finally gets rescued by an Indian military helicopter. If Indian military has come to the rescue operation, the earthquake must be very destructive. 

In Kathmandu, while being treated in a hospital, floods of wounded are all over. Some have been knocked in the head, some have got their legs squeezed and broken, some have no hands, and some are soaked in the blood from the head to toe. People are groaning, and the sirens of the ambulance never stop. Mike knows that the devastation is very, very big. 

Langtang valley before the quake hit

What about the condition in Langtang? What about Linda and Jessica? In the evening, yet to be fully recuperated, he walks out of the hospital. But all the hotels are closed. Not a single shop is open. Police are so busy that  he can solicit no help from them. He decides to walk on his own to Hotel Hyatt from Bir Hospital. In two hours walk during night, with the help of merely a map, he sees widespread destruction. When he arrives at the hotel, there are tents set at the premise. He tries to make connection with Linda but to no avail. He can't sleep the whole night. 

The next morning, the destruction in Langtang and all over the country comes to light. Langtang is swiped away, with about hundreds dead and hundreds missing. Linda and Jessica are not in the list of dead. They simply disappeared. 

In Kathmandu and rest of Nepal, threat was high. 

With the hope that they might still be alive, he sets out to look for them. With a guide and a porter, he sets out in the journey. He walks through villages ruined completely by the quake, lives with people taking shelter in the open fields and and river sides. He frantically digs into the debris at the roads, thinking that his loved ones might be buried there. He frantically keeps asking people if they saw them. The two meant life to him. Now they might be dead. 
When he is aware of his own frenzy, his hope surges as he hears of the miraculous survival and rescue of some victims even after seven days. He hears of a boy who was taken out of rubble after a week. He does not want to believe that his beloved are no more. 
Two weeks pass, still the whereabouts of his wife and daughter remain unknown.  Aftershocks keep striking. In the meanwhile, on May 12, 17 days after the quake, another terrifying quake hits. This time, it's 7.3 in Richter scale but enough to bring down more houses and kill a couple of hundred people and wound many. He is in a distant Gorkha village when the quake hits and the US marine helicopter arrives to take the critically wounded victims to Kathmandu for treatment. People jostle in to get to the helicopter. Seven victims and their relatives make it. But the ill-fated Huwey crashes. The seven US marines and two Nepali soldiers as well as the others in the helicopter are all dead. When this happens, the grievance of Mike awakens into strong passion to help. In order to heal his own wound, he thinks he must heal the wounds of others. Therefore, he goes back to Kathmandu, forms a team, and sets out to make a comprehensive documentary film to tell the world of the catastrophe this poor nation had to deal with. That would be his tribute to his beloved wife and daughter. He would want to do charity shows of that documentary and raise money for recovery and reconstruction of Nepal. 

US marine helicopter Huwey crashed in Nepal

He makes the story of how Dharahara, the landmark tower of Nepal, fell and how a girl who had come from Birgunj to see Kathamndu after her 10th grade national exam (SLC exam) died. 
He covers the story of how the God didn't come to save the praying good Christians when a seven storied building housing a church collapsed. Many other churches had collapsed killing 500 people in the valley. 
He also miraculously saves a woman from being raped, and a girl from being trafficked. In this way, he gets his salvation. 
After two months, his wife and daughter get discovered: they were buried under ten feet snow in the the Langtang Mountain base. Their bodies were still intact, preserved in the cold and sacredness of snow. He thinks that it was really a heavenly blessing to have died at the lap of sacred Himalayas. 
As he flies back to New York, he holds a huge premier show of his documentary.  

Sanjay Chhetri 
11/02/15
Written for the book "SHAKEN EARTH & FALLEN MARINE". 

[Acknowledgement: All the pictures and video included in the post are the properties of google.com. The whole text is entirely my original work. The names used here, such as Mike, Linda and Jessica are fictional only. However, the events described did actually happen. ]

When the Earth shook

Part I

I'm in my room on the fourth floor of the house. Suddenly the chair starts to shake. So does the table. The shaking goes steeply severe. The two bamboo book racks stacked with books start to vibrate and sway. I put my pen down on the table and take reflexively cautious  position. I see the walls vibrating, I feel the floor beneath my feet shaking, and suddenly it becomes hard for me to keep standing. It was then that I realize it's an earthquake.

April 25 quake unleashed landslides, blocked roads. 

When books start to fall in piles from the swaying book racks and when the cupboard standing against the wall suddenly comes down to land on top of my study table, and when I look at the ceiling and see it cracking, I realize it's not an ordinary earthquake.
The tremor grows very severe as I get trapped inside the room and I see the walls cracking, and I know the house is crumbling, but I also know that I no longer have time to run downstairs from the fourth floor. I start to realize that I can be killed. Any second these walls and the pillars may break and the ceiling above me may fall on top of my head. Any second the floor beneath me may fall apart and the whole house may flatten. This can be the last day I am alive. These moments may be the last minutes, or even the last seconds, of my breathing.  
Every vertical furniture in my room has fallen, crushing my phone and calculator and laptop. I hear loud screams and thundering sound waves from the outside. Houses are falling each seconds; people are running for lives and thousands are dying. Something very, very terrible is happening.

As the shaking exceeds forty seconds, I see the walls still standing and ceiling still intact, except for fractures. The shaking has not stopped yet. I stand up and go near the door and put my hand on the handle. Should I open it? What if outside of the room has been already broken? What if I open the door and suddenly the house tilts and I find myself slipping into the ruins? I hold on.

I think of my mom who was in third floor. Where was she when it started vibrating and where is she now? What if she is still inside? Where's dad? Where are my younger brother and younger sister who must have been watching television when it started shaking? Are they alright?
The house has not still crumbled and I've not incurred the slightest of the wounds yet. I must watch out for anything that may fall. Even if the house crumbles, I should survive. I should die this way. I should not die to a disaster. I should not die so unjustly to a mischief of the nature. These thoughts revive my hope for the life.

Some of the quake-induced slides blocked highways.

In about a minute, the vibration became less severe and finally subsided. It was at that moment that I opened the door and got ready to run downstairs.But, no sooner had I opened the door than the shaking resumed. I waited a second and felt that it was not as powerful this time. So I reflexively decided to take chances. So I ran, as fast and carefully as possible. As I was running steps after steps downstairs, the earth continued shaking. For a split second, my mom and my dad and sister and brother saw me and I saw them on the ground. Mom and sister shouted my name and said, "FAST..." In another split second, I realized that my family was in safety. The shaking started to grew again.  Just hold on for ten seconds, you house! I thought. Let me escape and you may fall if you will. Just don't get me trapped in the last second of my safety.
I was on the first floor and I saw a scarily big fault on the courtyard. The house had shaken from the foundation and was just a second or two away from falling. It was very evident. But I didn't stop to think about that fault at the moment. I ran out of the range of the possible fall and finally pushed myself into the crowd of hundreds of people in the field. It was an empty one acre land adjoining to our house. It was not completely safe but way too safer than the house. All the people of the neighborhood had gathered there. I was finally at the company of my family and neighbors. We all had just survived the catastrophe of the century.

Buried in the debris

In front of our house was a seven story house, which was still standing. Our house was standing. The immediate neighborhood seemed unharmed. But we all knew the country had changed forever the minute ago. Every single person in the crowd was shivering. They, like I, were yet to make sense of what had just happened and how they were standing alive there. The trauma was visible on their faces and bodies to most of them.
I was undergoing a completely empty mind. My mind was circling. My mental consciousness was trying to adjust to the experience of a minute ago. What could have happened to the worst? The house could have collapsed and I'd have been squeezed to death, my disfigured corpse lying trapped in the debris. A bulldozer would dig into the debris and arduously discover my dead body squeezed between the concrete. That could have been the end. All my dreams and fantasies, of becoming a millionaire by the age of 30, of travelling around the world by the age of 40, of becoming a great author and speaker and living on to 80 years to see the kids and grandkids grow and marry.... would end with my body being destroyed. I would have entered the most feared gate of all: death. 
But nothing like that happened, at least to me. 
Some of the people who regained their mind and who had their mobile phone on their hands started to make calls. But very few calls were successful. Some others turned FM radio on their phone. Even most of the radios were transmitting nothing. All the staff in the radio must have fled to the safety. People felt isolated. This gave way to the guessing games: what happened to the rest of the country, or the rest of the world. The quake was so powerful and big that everyone there felt as if the whole planet shrugged. It might not just be this the city of Kathmandu or the country of Nepal. It might very well be the entire geographic region of South Asia or Asia or the entire earth.
As minutes passed many rumors began to emerge and spread in that crowd of frightened, and hence psychologically distorted, neighbors: the six-storey building of a school on the neighborhood crumbled. The mall on the roadside has caved in, trapping many people inside. Dharahara, the tower of Nepal, has broken. A seven storey building that housed a church has collapsed. And so on. 

Some people who succeeded in making call to their relatives were relieved. The others whose call was not successful were worried. Some who talked on phone were desperate. Many had begun to gather around a mobile phone in the loudspeaker. The fm radios had started to resume broadcasting. People started to know or guess the Richter scale of the quake. Some were saying it was 8. Others claimed it was 9. Some were even saying it was 10 or 11. Many people had fled leaving the phones behind. 

Deepjyoti School, a six storied structure collapses on Apr 25

About ten minutes had passed when the earth shook again. A powerful aftershock.. People in the crowd screamed. Now, people were talking about how the tremor keeps returning. Some who were about to go back to their house and grab their phones or valuables got heavily deterred by this shock. People anticipated yet another temblor. And in less than another ten minutes, the earth shook yet again. It kept shaking longer this time. The houses were swaying. The birds in the sky were flying directionless. Dogs looked scared. Some barked in fright. People looked pathetic. I was no exception. But I knew I should not lose my composure as had my parents and many elderly people there. 
More rumors spread. The whole downtown Kathmandu is gone. Roads are blocked. The buildings are down everywhere. Thousands have have died already. These rumors made people even more vulnerable. 
I knew lots of things do change when the seemingly and habitually unshakable ground below you stirs and when the very ground and the house that give us safety threaten to kill us. We lose faith in the things that we've always trusted. Our belief system undergoes a paradigm shift. We suddenly become aware of our vulnerability. And a lot more happen. 
But the powerful aftershocks keep returning in every ten to fifteen minutes and I'm yet to figure things out. But I know something in me, in people around me, in society and in the nation has definitely change forever. I know that for sure. 

- Sanjay Kumar Chhetri
For the book "Shaken Earth & Fallen Marine". 
10/26/2015

The images used in the post are the properties of Google.com. The text entry of the post is entirely based on my personal experience, with negligible distortion. 

Devoting 3 hours a day for the book!

I heard some of the celebrities saying that the most useful (or game-changing) courses that they took in college were not their majors but their First Year Seminar courses . When I attended first few FYS classes of professor Jennifer Szabo, I started to understand what those celebrities were talking about. Our FYS was named "The Idea Lab: Affecting Change", and the possibility to turn my life over by the means of this course started to make me desperate. Then when we were required to declare what project we were going to take, I took courage to go for what I wanted to even though I had been scared of the bigness of the project.

According to this table I'm on preparation stage of the project.

My country, Nepal,  recently suffered a massive devastation from the series of earthquakes. The country still needed help to recover. It still does. When I left my family, friends, neighbors and fellow citizens behind in the turmoil of crises in Nepal and came to the secure, well-managed and luxurious setting of the United States, I was gradually developing a subliminal sense of guilt. While I was, and am, enjoying the privileges of abundance and stability in a developed country, my family and friends in Nepal were living with the post traumatic stress disorder in the houses largely weakened by the hundreds of quakes and amid the whole bunch of problems my country is facing. Nearly ten thousands people perished in the quake. Twenty five thousands were injured and some of them are permanently handicapped. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their houses and properties, and of course their family members. There are hundreds of cases where people lost all their family members, their houses, and their properties. They lost their wives and children and fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and friends. They lost all the tangible reasons to continue to live. On top of that, some even lost their organs and were practically depleted of any motivation or reason to live. There are cases where fifteen year old girls who came to the capital city from their villages in a holiday with the dream to see the city got to the top of the landmark Nepal tower ( Dharahara) and then the earth started to shake; the old tower crumbled and all the dreams and enthusiasm of the adolescence died forever with it. Also, people came from all over the world to rescue the trapped victims and some of them sacrificed their lives to save others. Coincidence was that I had been planning to pursue my abandoned education in the United States sine last year and I arrived here when my country was in the middle of the crisis.

Until last week, I felt stuck. I was puzzled and afraid and overwhelmed.

In the meanwhile, I have long been struggling  to establish myself as a writer. As a student, it was, and is, quite a challenge to write and publish. Somewhere my writing passion had to intersect my primary obligation of the college. I had already debuted as a writer but I was facing various challenges, both practical and intellectual, carrying the writing passion ahead. When I started my formal education in Ramapo College of New Jersey, I was largely uncertain in regards to my writing. Yes, writing had to somehow be the part of my formal college life, or it would be difficult for me to balance.
When I knew that I could take up any idea and make it work for the welfare of others ( community, campus, country, or the world) as the central part of our FYS course, I saw an opportunity in it. What if I wrote a book gathering my reflection and experience of the earthquake? What if I got the book published? What if the book sold well? What if I helped towards the reconstruction of my country with the money I made? What if?

Emotional graph for this challenging project probably looks like this.

What if I did it? What if it really happened? What if I could turn this FYS project requirement into a turning point of my life? What if I convert this cumbersome burden into an opportunity of the lifetime? What if the FYS course became a platform to discover and be initiated in my dream and passion? And more importantly, what if I could really affect change? What if I could build some houses in Nepal for those people who are still living under tattered tents? What if I could help some kids in Nepal to go to school? What if?

This is my debut book! This book always inspires me to do more.

Challenges stood scary. Could I write? Well, I probably could, but could I write well? Could I write well enough to attract tens of thousands of buyers? Then the professor said that she would appreciate the intention and effort of affecting change, the sincerity and diligence of the idea, rather than the end success of the result. This reminded me of the old wisdom of "Give your best and leave the rest". I thought, why worry about the fruits? Fruit is not under my control. However, seeds are with me. What's in my control is planting the seed, and taking care of it till it germinates, and then protecting it against possible harms until it is big enough to protect itself. If I have planted the seed, maintained the temperature, fertilized the soil, watered the sapling, and protect it when it's small and fragile, I can have faith that it will give me fruits. And even if I will not be the one to enjoy its fruits and shades, someone will. And that's the whole idea of the project: affecting change. Which mean, helping others. What mattered to the professor, and to me also, was whether I had genuine intention and idea to affect change or help the system or help the needy. Also what mattered was whether I gave sincere efforts to make the idea work and whether I gave the devotion it deserved.

Finally, I took the project.

And here I am. I feel stuck somehow. I have collected information and archived various sources to aid my writing. Yet I have not started to write formally. In first two weeks, I had not even figured out what type of book I was going to write. Now that I know that the book will be the narrative portrait of the earthquake experiences interweaved as a series of stories, I am yet to start writing toward the manuscript. There've been loads of assignments and tests of other subjects and I have got to take care of lots of other things. Still, I know how important and potentially pivotal this project is for me and I don't want to let this opportunity slip. I will make it happen.

I am probably still in Literature Review phase.

 From today, I have decided to devote three quiet hours in the library for this book every day until I complete the book. I  will switch off the mobile phone and turn off the social media. I will simply write and research and make errors and cut and edit and whatever....for the book. I will read the articles and insights on disaster psychology; I will access some of the media and government archives to learn more about the quake; and I will write a lot. I think three hours a day consistently will make it possible for the first manuscript to be ready within November. If that happens, then I can have december to take care of its publishing part.

[ All the above photos except for that of my book are the properties of www.google.com/images ]

Historic Background Nepal

This is what Nepal usually looked like ( and looks like)......