25th April, 11:56 am

                     25^th April, 11:56 am
                                          -Fifty seconds; wish forgotten, worth remembrance

For someone like me, who prefers to be a late-night-owl than an early-cuckoo, it was a usual 8 o’ clock in the morning but with a gloomy ambiance outside when I rose up. Putting up with the morning routines, we settled in our sitting room after brunch, the four of us- Mom, Dad, my elder sister and me. Suddenly, I felt the sofa I was lounging on, tremble violently as if some giant had caught the chair’s armrest by his hand and started rocking it angrily. At first thought, I presumed it would last just for few seconds as of my previous earthquake experiences but this one felt like forever. 56 minutes past 11 and the terror started to blanket us for the whole fifty seconds. The violent shake of the ground, the awful sway of the photographs hung against the wall, falling down of them and the dread that arrived in everyone’s face in a jiffy- the memory of which still dances in front of my eyes. All that came to our mind was to lay down covering our head with our hands since our senses could not convince us enough to escape the building until Dad got up, opened the door and led us out. “This is it. This is the end. We are all but finished” were the thoughts hovering in my mind while we were inside though I was consoling “It’s ok. It’ll end now” to my elders. Soon we were out on the ground with a throng of people, all scared to death. Some had no slippers beneath their feet while some had no clothes but their towel-wrapped body. Children were screeching loudly and every people had a thin film of tear outside a dense dread of the inevitable in their eyes. Power was already out, no phone networks, and brother was not home. The continuous failing trials to reach his cell, tears flooding off my sister’s eyes and the deepening worry of mom coerced more terror. And just then a message popped in- “I am safe. Are you guys Ok?

The shake seemed to have soothed but our hearts that had shrunk into a dark quarry of terror was yet to calm down. Entering inside the house was a question never existed and in no time another seism was felt, in fact a series of seism were felt. We looked at our house from far. We watched how the seism rocked it and felt the quake at the core of our hearts. It felt like we had left behind something so dear and we were just waiting for it to collapse but be able to do nothing but watch. Thankfully, by god’s grace the unwished kept from happening. After a long moment of exploring petrified compositions in everybody’s faces, people started the arrangement for temporary settlement. Unaware of how long shall we have to reside temporarily in an open place, we moved towards the open ground with hearts sinking in terror. People continuously trying to reach their loved ones with watery eyes despite the failing networks, shaky voice of everyone singing in my ears, the black doomed sky above our head and the seism that were ambushing upon us brought us more and more distress. I wished it was a nightmare. I wished somebody would come and pinch me.

We fell into the suspicious arms of the night under the open overcast sky. The sun was visible on the horizon next dawn but we were still captivated by the terror which magnified multi-fold after another huge seism struck at around 12:55 pm. A house which was cracked by the earthquake the earlier day got obliterated by that shake right in-front of our eyes. It was unbearable; the picture of houses crumbling into bricks and dust but what was most painful was the dying hope of people. Nature had hit us with the fiercest squall, the most ferocious of its kind.

A wall-lizard might not catch a moth as promptly as how the news of the turmoil got spread across the globe. It was just then when we heard of the collapse of the tower of our pride- Dharahara. The nine storeyed tower that had been upheaving the nation’s glory for as long as the ancestors of my ancestor remembered, pulverized to chunks with hundreds of lives buried under the rubble. The durbar squares, sacred temples, churches, mosques and a defined number of monuments collapsed all at once and along with all the heritages that collapsed, fell apart a huge piece of every patriotic Nepali heart. Tears of the ragged flooded eyes of the rich. The western corner of the nation grieved and empathized over the irrevocable loss of the eastern. The whole nation was in the same boat of terror and only terror and the people inside were still in the fear that the boat might invert any unexpected moment and extinguish the remaining lives too. Days passed by but the quakes weren’t done threatening people yet. Restoring the normal lifestyle was way too far. A house that protects people from harm proved to be the cause of so and that people dreaded to enter. The rich, the ragged, the old, the infant, the noble, the commoner, the esteemed, the culprit, everybody were on street TOGETHER. The turmoil, however, was certain to take a lot to restore lives to normal which is why, it was time people stood brave and stepped forward to aid the other human in need and became each other’s support system. It was heartwarming to see that people from all around the world had already come together to help Nepal with all modest sense of humanity at this traumatic a situation. Countries were opening their healing embraces wide for us. On top of all, our Nepali brothers and sisters were going above and beyond to help each other come out of the grief over the loss and rise above the fear of unseen and never-can-be-predicted natural calamity in any way possible. The seism that took away more than 5000 lives as of the death toll of the 10^th day of the catastrophe, injured double the number of people and obliterated lakhs of houses and many physical infrastructures prompted many a rescue teams among which the biggest shout out is deserved by the security service providers that are Nepal Army, Nepal police force and Armed police force of the country. The frequent aftershocks and snowballing aftermaths were never the cue to stop for them. Even at the worst of devastation, they did not think of retreating for a second, instead, flooded all their sweat and blood in the rescue mission. Kudos! to the brave-hearts who rescued so many people alive, with no strings attached even after ten days of the massive hit.

We were gradually rebounding, rising above the grief, we all confronted and convincing ourselves of the end of the evil and cue to a new good start. No sooner than we slowly started getting back to life, had another huge wrathful seism shook the ground beneath our feet and shadowed the sky above our head on the 18^th day of the first quake. Needless to mention, life shifted back to tents and tarps and rescue and relief again. It scraped right across the earlier wound and deepened it. Nonetheless, those divine-souls working out there, days and nights for their countrymen, were stirred even more to keep up with the noble aid and dispense makeshift reliefs to the right hands. I call them the real heroes.

Calculating the aftermath, the death toll has crossed 8000 with the injured ones, more than double the number of the deads. The devastation of  Bad news is- Nothing lasts forever and the good news is- Nothing lasts forever. What has been lost can’t be redeemed but what we still have surely can be preserved. All of us have lost something really dear to us for they were not meant to be with us to eternity. Sooner or later, we have had to let go of it as it was never in our hands to bar the unforeseen. It’s just that the circumstance arose sooner to us and now, we have got no options than accepting it. However, we still have our hopes and faiths intact, which we must promise to never forsake; hope to rise again, belief to bounce back and faith to resurge. Had anyone of us ever imagined that a fallen tower that upheaved the nation’s glory for decades would unite hearts from Mechi to Mahakali? Did anyone ever think that a catastrophe would construct a thousand pillars of hope and support? Who would have imagined that the most precious asset of any nation- UNITY was to be seen this day as such beautiful an illustration? Those fifty seconds are wished forgotten but these are the reasons why they are worth remembrance. So, this is all and enough we’ve got- hopes and beliefs guided by our constructive hands.

We’ve spent our yesterdays and todays on rescue and relief. Now, it’s time to rehabilitate the rescued and the relieved on which the rescued and the relieved themselves should play a pivotal role to build themselves up physically and psychologically resilient enough to endure the hardships they might encounter in the meantime. We must stomach the minor trembles and employ ourselves to the rehabilitation and restoration mission so we can eventually tread the path towards reconstruction and rebirth. With the purpose of rehabilitation, tomorrow is the day I shall set for Bhaarta village of Makwaanpur, a hard hit district. With seven complete strangers, who have come together to help out the survivors with an earnest empathy, I will be spending a week at the village and helping them from within the best possible depth of my capacity. I wait for the sun to peep through the horizon and light my way towards the new goal. I wait for every tomorrows that will bestow blooms of restoration upon us. I wait for tomorrow to witness us rise above the turmoil that whipped us hard. I wait for tomorrow to see us live stronger and better than ever.
                                                                       
                                                                                          -to be continued…