Chitwan (Nepal), May 4 (IANS) It was providence, and some quick thinking, that saved a group of people who were caught at the epicentre of the 7.9 magnitude earthquake when it hit Nepal on April 25th.
Businessman Anil Thapliyal was out on a night camping trip to Lamjung with 35 others, including family and friends, as part of a Rotary Club toour.
Lamjung district, about 85 km from Kathmandu, was the epicentre of the quake which has killed over 7,000 people and injured around 14,000.
They had hired a bus for the trip. “We felt the bus shake… We initially thought the driver was ill or under the influence of liquor. Then we realised that the earth was shaking vigorously.”
Panic set in. Everyone got off the bus and ran for cover but found themselves in the middle of nowhere.
“There was a deep gorge on one side and a rocky mountain on the other,” he said. To add to the terror, a landslide sent rocks down the hill.
Shaken to the core after narrowly escaping physical harm that night, Thapliyal says he has not mustered enough courage to go back to his home.
“All of us are so scared that the idea of returning home to Lamjung gives us the jitters,” Thapliyal told IANS, recounting how the earth under his feet shook on April 25 in Lamjung.
Thapliyal’s family has is staying at their second house in Chitwan about 100 km southwest of Kathmandu. “We have decided to stay put here for now,” his wife said.
All across Chitwan, there are people affected by the killer earthquake.
Maria Subba’s six-year-old son refuses to go to school any more.
The boy was in his school when the temblor rained death and destruction. Since then, Subba says the boy’s appetite too has gone down. Nearly 10 days after the deadly disaster, there is no end to the trauma enveloping Nepal.
While normalcy is returning at snail’s pace in most parts of the quake-hit nation, the spectre of another quake is an overpowering nightmare for most people here, as over a hundred aftershocks have rattled buildings and nerves.
Baijnath Agrahari, who studies in a Kathmandu engineering college, has been unable to sleep since the quake. He was at his one-room house with friends in Kathmandu when the earthquake struck.
“We jumped out of the house as it developed deep cracks,” he says.
Hundreds are still sleeping in the open, under plastic sheets, fearing a repeat.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)