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. ]