After the earthquake

“Is this how I am going to die ?” Holed up in Lobuche, a few hours from Everest Base Camp, in bone-chilling cold, this was not a thought I wanted to entertain.

It was 25^th April 2015, and we had survived the horrendous earthquake that had hit Nepal, just a few hours earlier.

English is often an imprecise language, where words often don’t do justice to the experience. Earthquake sounds like a cousin of milkshake. A benign word that implies, a mild quiver. Yes, the earth actually does, quake. But it doesn’t only quake. It triggers a violent aftermath – depending on its intensity, and your proximity to its furious core. To see the ground shake violently, to feel that the land beneath your feet was about to split apart. To disbelieve your eyes when large boulders rotate as if on a spinning wheel, to witness the large unshakeable mountain shiver and tremble, to hear a long deafening roar and to know that a large chunk of mountain has just collapsed somewhere close. No, ‘earthquake’, does not quite do justice to the experience.

Earthquakes are distinct from other natural disasters is many ways- not the least in that, they happen again and again. And then, yet again. And then some more. All within a few hours, continuing for weeks afterwards. Hundreds of aftershocks followed that initial monumental attack. Some so miniscule, you could consign them to imagination, some other others so large, they deserve a name more respectful of their impact, than ‘aftershock’.

There are thousands of stories that have already been told about the Nepal earthquake. Many recounted over and over again; gaining with each retelling, color and embellishment. Thousands more lie buried under the rubble, never to be heard.  Ours, less colourful than many. We were climbing a steep mountain pass near Thukla, full of large boulders. Our story would have been different, more colorful, had there been a landslide at the Thukla Pass, but color passed us by and instead chose a target just a few hours away – coloring the dotted landscape of the Everest Base Camp in swathes of white and spots of red. 18 people died in the EBC avalanche. Several dozen fearless bravehearts injured. Maimed maybe, for life, by their thirst to reach for Earth’s highest point.

Immediately after the earthquake, ignorant still of its ravaging intensity, we climbed on. At the top of the pass, where monuments to dead Everest climbers reminded us that fatality was a routine mountaineering hazard, we regrouped. We were a group of 6 – our family of three, and our friends – Sharmila, Anupam and Parag. The company we had used : Himalayan Holidays, had another group of 9 from Dubai that was following the exact same itinerary. The other group had a satellite phone- our only connect with the outside world. Information now trickled in via the satellite phone : Kathmandu was badly damaged; EBC , our destination had been wiped out by an avalanche-one we had heard recently  ;  Periche, the village we had left in the morning after breakfast, disfigured beyond recognition. Lobuche, our proposed next stop, we learnt, was still standing, though with some skirmishes. We decided to proceed to Lobuche.

Lobuche is a loose collection of teahouses, situated at 5000 meters. Lobuche’s teahouses had some broken walls - their stone bricks all piled up in a heap. They had tumbled out, like blocks of Lego, leaving gaping holes in place of rhythmic stone layers. Ours, only minimally damaged, and somehow, miraculously, with its wifi intact. 

Inside the teahouse, we huddled close, partly in fright, partly because we were in the midst of a blizzard and temperatures had sunk deep below the words ‘freezing’. The teahouse would not turn the heating on – icy chill a preferred alternative to the possibility of a raging fire, should another quake damage the room heater in the centre of the room.  Google shared with us tales of destruction in far away Kathmandu, even as injured Sherpas trudging down from EBC, recounted grisly stories of near-misses, of people running to escape the white cloud of falling snow, falling sometimes, failing sometimes to outrun it. Death lay in colourful bodybags just a few hours away, with the mountains donning all-white in mourning.

Walking is slippery business, even in ordinary circumstance in this terrain. You literally walk on ice, sometimes. Scores greviously injured, ironically,  in their sprint to safety. Bad weather making immediate rescue impossible, dozens lay immobile all night, near EBC, praying to survive.

When Death sleeps at your doorstep, Fear crashes its way in. Through the broken walls of your spirit. Fear, however, is a bad team player. For when fear meets fear, panic sprouts. There were frequent aftershocks, and panicky trekkers pushed each other to rush outdoors. “Outdoors” was uncomfortable even with several layers of warm clothing. So inevitably, eventually, everybody returned indoors. Waiting on tenterhooks for the next tremor. Ostensibly surfing on the internet, chatting, eating, sleeping even, but, in reality, waiting. Just waiting. Fear and Panic playing footsie, under a thin veneer of calm.

We debated the benefits of descending to warmer terrain, where staying ‘outdoors’ would be a viable alternative. However descending immediately entailed a walk on slippery ice in diminishing light. Staying, on the other hand meant enduring the possibility of our teahouse being flattened by the omnious looking boulders on the flanking mountain slope. Unsurprisingly , for a group of  Indian geeks, that decision was left to Probability. “Two back-to back landslide capable earthquakes are just not probable”, Anupam, P.Hd, theorised. Was it logic or bravado that we eventually chose to stay ?  

As frequent aftershocks continued through the night, forcing noisy panicky stampedes to the debatable safety of the outdoors, the scale tilted more towards bravado. When nothing untoward happened at the end of another round of tremors,the scale tipped back in favour of logic.  Along the way, we became proficient in the art of escape – having on our bodies at all times, all the possessions we would need to survive – warm clothing, shoes, passports and money. The spectre of death bringing forth with searing clarity that nothing mattered more than life itself. Everything else, money or mastercard could buy. 

The night was spent in restlessness. Sleep, hard to come by. Several chose to stay awake, rather than risk being taken by surprise. Some vacated their rooms and slept in the dining room – where the door to an escape was within a moment’s reach. The owners of the teahouse themselves choosing to brave sleeping in tents in -15 Degree cold, rather than risk being indoors. Anxiety coloring clearsightedness, as several began to repose their faith in clairvoyance and predictions. “The next earthquake will be at 2.00 a.m” or “A big tremor is expected at 5.00 am.” Seeking solace in a fictional certainty, rather than embrace the fraught uncertain reality. The irony that those soothsayers predicting future tremors had been incompetent at divining the arrival of the original destructive one, lost somewhere in the mayhem. Helplessness had an ugly face.

The events of the day, however, did not perturb everybody. The Logical Indian Triumverate : Ajit, Anupam and Parag, slept like babies through the night, their bravado letting them snooze through all the tremors and the stampedes. Sharmila was not so lucky, and Trayi, our 9 year old, not so logical.  She insisted on following the anxious mob, refusing to fall asleep, lest something happen to her because she let her guard down.

As mothers and fathers, we are bestowed with task of keeping our child shielded. We learn to keep her from physical harm. We get skilled at fending off all her evil demons. ‘Don’t worry, Mamma is here’, our most successful lullaby. Mamma, the all powerful. Mamma, competent to protect her from every eventuality. It is a lie, we know deep inside, but when our baby cuddles up, buying wholly into the myth, we feel formidable, even if momentarily. There comes a time, however, when our child wakes up to our ordinariness. She sees through our façade and realises that we are no more equipped to protect her than, she is herself. She cannot depend on us blindly anymore, she concludes, and must use her own resources to keep herself safe. Helplessness over your own well-being is crippling.  Fouler still is the impotence, the emasculation you feel, when your child fears for her survival, even after you assure her ‘Don’t worry, Mamma is here’.

Some feelings, some memories of that night will recede with time, inevitably.  But I know for sure, I will never forget my daughter’s face as she lay in my arms, furiously fighting back her sleep, her eyes filling up as she whispered ‘Mommy, I don’t want to die.’