Looking Back at Nepal Earthquake of 2015: A Sad Memory
April 25, 2015.
The morning felt usual. People
drank tea at the local tea shops, chatted away time, laughed at a joke in a
jovial mood. Early summer and yet the air felt heavily laden with the heat of
the noon-day sun. It all passed just as usual.
Having suffered a psychological
trauma I had no job, and funnily no pocket on my shirt. No money, and no pocket
to carry it; that would sound fine. And that made me feel a little
uncomfortable. Working through an on-going book, I needed a place to hold and
carry at least my pen, and having talked with an artisan who worked at a local
business that produced ready-made wear I was planning for an upgrade: a
patch-pocket on the left bosom of my half shirt.
He measured the shirt, we agreed
upon a basic hexagon design, he rummaged through a small heap of discarded
cut-pieces and somehow managed to produce a small piece of fabric that had an
agreeable colour for a patch-work: it did not exactly match the colour of the
shirt but was doable with. He immediately set to work in front of his electric
sewing machine.
Leaning over with my hands on the
table, I was fascinated by the high-speed movement of the needle, and a thin
trail of thread that it left behind, on the fabric. PPP—RRRRRRR! The machine
went on. PPP—RRRRR——PPP—RRRRR!!
“Why do you shake the table man?”
he asked me after a little while as he was turning and folding the fabric
piece, under the boot of the high-speed electric sewing machine.
I was confused a little bit at his
remark at first as I was not shaking his table, and drew back, standing
straight. Damn! The full horror of it came into me just about then: the whole
ground beneath me was shaking violently.
“It’s a quake,” I muttered. The
ground felt unsteady, the wall moved, the machine rattled side to side. An
eerie sound echoed into the head: the frightening sound of death looming close
by.
“What?!!” He asked, surprised.
“A qu—ake…” I shouted and tried
to run out. Had it been at other times, I might have laughed at myself as I
felt rather wobbly passing the narrow corridor, my hands feeling for a support
on either side of me. The door was wide open and I could make out the bright
light of day just a few meters off, but I alternated pressing on the right wall
and the left a number of times just to cross the distance of a mere 5 or 6
meters: nothing was stable.
It felt like I was drunk-dancing
even when outside of that trap-hole. I am not afraid of sudden death but the
horror of being left crippled with a few bones broken upsets me all the time.
The instinct then was to run, but once outside I could see the electric poles
swaying in the air as if it was made of a flexible rubber. The bunch of wires
clattered as they rubbed against each other. Commuters on motorbikes just
dropped their vehicles and ran wobbly, horrified at the uncontrollable
instability of the machine on wheels, and at the same time, not being sure of
their own legs. The air was filled with echoes of helpless trepidation, and
people around felt like dolls filled just with fear and nothing else, with horror
written all over their empty faces. The ground was still shaking as if you were
standing on a small dinghy and huge waves crashed against it.
Knees half bent for balance as
the ground continued shaking, I looked at the horror of things from the middle
of the street: the poles swayed as if their sole purpose were to dance in a
frightening manner while the cables they carried sang clattering songs.
People’s voices filled the air: voices loud and low, far and near. Voices that
appeared unusual to the ears as if all of that formed some background noise of
some distant world. Adding to that, crows cawed from the air, and as I tried to
look up at the roofs of the houses, I saw the buildings sway, the pillars supporting
the water tanks high up on their rooftops sway dangerously. It was chaos all
around.
How long did it take for all of
this to happen? About 45 seconds!
Counting from one to forty-five
with each ticking second of the clock; that is how long it all took. And after
that, everyone was shaken. They brought out blankets and mattresses from their
homes into the open grounds.
“The quake went,” people say in
our tongue. “It will return,” they shouted and whispered. Nobody was willing to
stay indoors.
Old people got shaken to their
cores. Young ones were not allowed by their parents to go inside their homes.
One bunch in the ground followed another and another until the whole village
settlement came out with one form of mattress or another. Water was fetched
from the shops nearby as were light snacks, cigarettes and packs of playing
cards. Then someone complained to someone else that it felt too hot. Someone
rushed on a motorbike and fetched a tarpaulin from the nearby store. A tent was
born in the open.
Someone else drove some old
stakes and sticks into the ground and spread plastic sheets over making another
makeshift tent for the older relatives.
Local shops ran out of snacks and
water and juices in no time. Radio broadcasts talked about possible after-shakes;
old people already had specific language referrals for “going” and “returning
back” of the quake.
A jerk followed. Then another
movement that shook the ground. Terrified people brought out their stoves and
cooking pots and pans into their tents, locking their homes from outside. At
some point, it even felt like people were now going back in time: abandoning
their concrete houses for the sake of plastic and tarpaulin tents. It felt so
overwhelming.
The next day, television news and
video footages came out: buildings collapsed, monuments crumbled, people got
buried, hospitals became overcrowded with the injured. Chaos and destruction
overshadowed everything !
A sense of helplessness followed
everyone, everywhere. Then the international community responded. Aid started
to pour in. The only international airport in the country became overloaded and
burst its seams, diverting passenger jets elsewhere as the cargo-carrying
giants landed and took off. Some of the largest planes ever made came in and
went away; some of the strangest planes such as the Harrier Jets came over for
rescue operations.
The Israelis came with their
mobile hospitals, the Chinese and the Japanese came with tents and
sophisticated rescue equipment, the French came with the medicines. The Indians
came with media to proclaim false aid: “we did this and that, and reached here
and there, before anyone else” they claimed. Yes, they did reach places, but
what help did they offer to the victims rather than carry their military and
media personnel up to the Chinese border??
The people who were outside did
not went in; those who were in came out one by one as the aftershocks
continued. Open grounds became covered with tents of all odd shapes sizes and
colours. Stores ran out of them in no time.
Then another big shake followed
on 12th May. The houses that were shaken by the first big quake
collapsed down to the ground. The first one had been measured to be 7-points-8,
they said; the second one was measured to be 7-points-3. A total of nearly ten
thousand lost their lives. Millions became homeless.
The government changed the rules
where law and order does not exist. Donors could directly offer aid to the
victims before, but now they could not; they had to go through government
channels. Those who were receiving at least some now missed out on even food,
water and medicine. Everything from tents and blankets to rice from Bangladesh,
one of the poorest nations in the region, got channelized into government
coffers. Were they actually distributed? I doubt it, given the fact that tents
and blankets marked by the donors were later seen in the markets for sale. Rice
disappeared somewhere, tents were seen inside the complexes of politicians and
party leaders. All the money that were sent into the rehabilitation fund set up
by the government got either unaccounted for, or has not been heard of since. As
I write these lines, victims have already suffered two monsoon seasons and are
still living under the tents and makeshift shelters. Roads are being swept away
by monsoon floods, landslides are claiming lives of hundreds, and floods are
sweeping away people as if they were mere ants! Many of these have been left
out as the ones taking their surveys have not included them as victims in the
database. Why? The officials were asking for bribes, and the poor were not able
to pay them! What a shame!!
Those who never had homes in the first place got registered as victims and received donations; those who have had everything taken away with their homes remained left out. Houses and buildings that never should have been authorized for construction in the first place also suffered the consequences; but who was there to blame? Nobody took any responsibility.
It is sad that the donor
community had given freely for the use of people during the time of crisis, but
the corrupt government and officials have freely used them as their own and
neglected the plight of millions. It is also sad that Nepal Food Corporation,
the sole state agency responsible for food management and distributions is
trying to sell rice donated by Bangladesh as it is not efficient in
distributing it to the victims and poor people. Or is it that officials high up
found it difficult to consume all the rice by themselves in collaboration with
their relatives and hence are trying to convert it into money that everyone can
consume?
Almost two rainy seasons have
passed now, and a year and a half has elapsed since the big quake; and more
than a thousand small and big quakes have come and gone. Monsoon is heavy; the
poor sleep under the tarpaulins and tents rattled by relentless rains while the
rich and powerful are blind to the drops that perforate the roofs of fate. Life
still continues but the rules keep changing: the reach of the rich knows no
bounds, and there is no confusion as to what the rich with reach have been
doing all along!
[Researched and written on the request of Tessy Beaulin; Radio 100.7, Luxembourg. Photographs first appeared in National Geographic: Your Shot page at http://yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/profile/378231 Newspaper clips are for
reference purposes only. Texts and photographs by Subarna Prasad Acharya. © July 2016. All rights reserved.]
