Widespread destruction by April 25 earthquake and its aftershocks! Houses crumbled everywhere. I was practicing Mathematical Analysis in my study room on the fourth floor of our four-storied house in northern Kathmandu when all of the sudden everything started to shake. The vibration grew with every passing second and before I figured out what was happening, the violent jerking caused the walls of the room to start cracking. The steel cupboard fell; my book racks fell; the loudspeaker fell; pretty much everything vertical fell in the room. The water jar fell and water spilled all over the room. This all happened very quickly and I in the middle of the chaos, I started to understand that it was a massive earthquake: the one I had been seeing in my dreams consistently for ten nights. The house was shaking, swinging and collapsing. Even till then running downstairs had not occurred to my life. I had a hope that I would not die that way. Or that the house would not simply crumble. I thought that walls might fall and the ceiling might crack and the house might be wrecked in the might of a few seconds. When this calculation was going on, I thought the attempt to run three stories down the staircases was not possible. Then I decided: This house is gone. But I should leave......And my mom and sister and brother who were in the third floor.
After 60 seconds of horror, the first strike stopped. The house had cracks but it was still standing. I then quickly ran downstairs. But the shaking was still not completely gone. When I reached the ground floor, I saw huge cracks at the edges of the house on the ground. The house was one or two seconds from collapsing. I saw a huge crowd of traumatized neighbors and my family members on the field adjoining our house. I was the only one left in our house during the whole one minute vibration.
The earthquake, however, didn't stop there. Aftershocks big and small continued to rock. The radio on people's phones started to broadcast about the devastation. Our landmark tower called Dharahara is gone. Most of our historical buildings are gone. A local school nearby collapsed. And so on. That night, all of us, family members and neighbors slept right on that ground under the open sky without food or water. The earthquake kept rocking. Aftershocks continued. We could not sleep. To make the matte worse, it started to drizzle around the midnight. But we were alive and so thankful. Thousands had perished when we survived.
When I looked back, our house should not have been standing: given that relatively stronger houses have collapsed. Had it fallen, who knows whether I would see the next sunrise. I could be buried in the debris of my own house. Or my beloved family member would perish.
But my house didn't crumble. And I was alive even after that deadly earthquake. So many people whom I knew died. My friends died. Some relatives died.
For more than a month, we slept under the tents on the ground. Our house which used to mean our safe refuge had now turned into the symbol of death.
On the several days, I was plunged into serious soul-searching about life and its vulnerability and sensibility.
The images (except the second in the column) are the the images available in Google Images. I hold the copyright of none of these but the second one.
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