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| The Quake |
By:
P. Anil Prasad |
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=1=
Winter was in its peak and the night was chilly. Little Salim was struggling with the piercing winter as the full Moon peeped through the semitransparent pale yellow sheath of snow. The view of the village in the dim moonlight frightened him. The collapsed structures reminded him of the Giants in the fairy tales that his Grand Ma used to tell him. The only relief was a small group of people who were sitting nearby.
Salim once again recollected the incidents occurred in the morning. He was on his way to School when the massive tremors occurred. He was very late due to his elder brother Rahim’s reluctance to go to market to sell eggs that was the only living for their family. Normally their mother would go to market early in the morning. But today she was not well and hence she asked Rahim to go to market. Then Rahim told her that he had some homework to complete and requested her to send Salim to market. At this the brothers quarreled furiously. At last their mother Fatima intervened and settled the issue by sending Salim to the market. She also asked him to buy rotti and vegetables on his way back.
He was cursing Rahim while he ran to market. He knew very well that Rahim was making false excuses. It was the main reason for his fury. Market was very much crowded in the morning. He had to struggle hard in the crowd to sell the eggs and buy rotti and vegetables. When he reached home, Rahim had gone to school. While taking the school bag he was almost crying. With eyes filled with tears he ran to school without giving ear to mother's call for having rotti and black tea:
“Sali, dear, don’t go without having breakfast…Sali...”
He could not have thought that it would be her last words to him! Little Salim’s eyes filled. He desperately wanted the warmth of her hands. In the thoughts of his dearest mother, he forgot the chilling winter and slowly walked towards the riverside.
His house was on the other side of the river. They had to cross the river through a very old and narrow wooden bridge to reach school. During holidays he liked to play on the bridge. He loved to climb on its bars and hang as a Bat. Now the bridge had gone and the village stood divided by the river. His little mind hesitated to accept the reality as it was.
=2=
Though Salim did not want to recollect the incidents in the morning, it haunted him horribly. The first and the most deadly tremor lasted for around three minutes. The earth was shaking violently. He did not understand what was happening beneath his feet. Every thing was vibrating terribly. He fell down heavily in that turbulence. While lying on the ground he heard some body shouting “Quake…Quake…”
The air was filled with brown sand and soil. Screaming and desperate calls for help were heard from every corner. Hardly had they emerged from the first shock when the second one occurred. He thought that it would be the end of the world! Nothing was visible for more than half an hour. When the thick layer of sand slowly diluted, he could not believe his eyes…and further he was not able to understand where he was. The place looked like a battlefield. The sight was so horrible. Almost all the buildings in the vicinity had become heaps of sand and stone with human bodies covered in blood among them.
When he realized the gravity of the situation, with a screaming he ran towards his home. There were no roads or pavements in front of him. He ran over the debris and fell down many a time before reaching the riverside. There he could not find their old wooden bridge. Even if there were a bridge he would have been stopped there for the other side of the river was also like a desert. A totally upset Salim fainted and sat down there. He did not know how long he sat there. While he looked around he saw a few people, who escaped the strokes, were running amidst the debris in great panic. They were trying in vein to remove the debris using logs.
The destiny was so cruel to them. The earth swallowed thousands and rendered hundreds of thousands homeless. Thousands, who were buried alive under the debris, would have gasped for breathe and prayed to see the sunlight again.
Salim’s heart was also throbbing with anxiety to go to the other side of the river to see his mother …but no way to cross the wide and deep river. He tried to convince himself that his mother was safe somewhere over there. Then he wanted to go to the place where their school stood, to see whether his brother was safe. But the grownups did not allow him to go there. At this, he wept loudly. By and by he was carried away in the screaming heard from all around the place.
In the evening Jabbar, Salim’s neighbor and a local athlete, who managed to swim across the river from the other side of the village, brought the bad news that he was fearing…it made him realize that he had become an orphan, like many children in their village. By accepting that truth, he ceased to be the pet younger son of a lovely mother. The stroke of the truth was far beyond his toleration and the reaction it produced in him was so strange. At first dense darkness filled in his mind and subsequently, as the time elapsed, it was replaced with frozen sentiments. He knew pain was still there in his mind, but it would not be reflected.
Finally he thought that he would also join others in 'search and rescue' efforts. But he was nearly collapsed at the very first sight of an elderly lady’s corpse as the people pulled it out of the debris. However familiarity makes man accustomed to adversities; little Salim became quite accustomed with severely wounded people and defaced corpses by the end of the day. The wounded were shifted to open grounds since tremors continued to rock their land. The corpses, most of them were terribly defaced and hence unidentifiable, were heaped near a partially collapsed structure.
=3=
When a chilly gentle wind pierced through him his thoughts returned to the present. From the riverside, he went to the small gathering and sat among them. All of them were tired and speechless. Fears did not bring in sleep. They were silently counting seconds for the warm morning rays to come. In that freezing winter night, for them, each minute was having the length of an hour. At times, in desperation, they thought that the terrible night was not going to an end.
After painful hours of a chilly winter night, the sun rose over the mountains. On the second day, after the exhaustive efforts, a few more fortunate were added to their group among from the debris. More corpses were recovered. The screaming of the wounded also strengthened eventually.
They hoped in vain for the arrival of some saviors. No food, no shelter from winter, no medicine for wounded…they were put in the mercy of chance. The river water was their only food those days. By that time a lot of the severely wounded had gone to the heap of corpses.
They became exhausted. Some of them were severely wounded in their efforts to save others. In the sleepless night they complained hopelessly:
‘They’re all in the towns’
‘Their kith and kin are there. Therefore they want to be there’
‘You are right, it seems that we are nonexistent for them’
‘Bullshit, we are going to die of winter and starvation. They shall not come before that’ –Some one was exasperated.
Salim was listening to the conversation silently. He did not feel angry to anybody. He thought that perhaps God might be angry with them.
=4=
On the third day suddenly the sky became dark. Lightning flashed. The rain started! It started simply…became heavier and heavier. Wounded minds and bodies were further mutilated by torrential rain. The water levels in the river rose continuously and new springs appeared in the hills. All of a sudden the river began to swallow the land. Everybody ran away to higher planes leaving behind the injured and heaps of corpses. Before joining others in the retreat, Salim looked at the group of wounded people for a while. Some of them were unconscious…some of them were raising hands for help…some of them were praying…the old fakir with long grey beard alone looked at him with a painful smile. It made his eyes filled. Then the poor old man waved his hands as if asking him to go away with others.
On their way to higher planes, the group had lost almost half of its strength. Older ones had fallen somewhere. Comparatively younger people alone remained in the group. Their condition was also very bad. Some one in the group managed to find out some foodstuff covered in dirt and soil from among the debris of what seemed to be a shop. He was kind enough to share with others what he got. Though it was not much different from mud, they all ate it with great taste. But Salim could not eat it. Not because it was filthy, but the figure of the fakir was filled in his eyes along with the faces of his beloved mother and brother. He was not seeing any thing else.
On the fourth day they all lost hope. They would not attempt search and rescue on the higher plane any more. It was not a thoughtful decision. Simply they could not, as they were not able to even stand upright. Their hearts were filled with vacuum. Gradually they lost the differentiation between chilly night and sunny days…for them all sensations began to feel alike. In fact they did not know whether they were dead or alive.
The seventh day of their agony! As usual after a dreaded chilly night the sunny day had come. But they were not knowing the passing of night and breaking of day. All of them lain on the open ground in a semi-conscious state. Salim was seeing a dream. In his dream he played on the bridge with his brother. They could see their mother in the front yard of their little house made of mud and round stones. Everywhere plants and beautiful flowers danced in gentle wind. The air was filled with sweet fragrance of flowers. All of a sudden the sun disappeared. Darkness spread all over there. Lighting flashed. In a flash he saw his brother running away. He screamed in panic. But the sound did not come out his gullet.
While the lightning continued Salim opened his eyes with great pain. It was very difficult for him to keep his eyes opened in the intense flashlights. Slowly and slowly, as the vision improved, he saw vague images leaning over him. His eyes were silently begging for water. But the men around him were busily focusing their cameras. |
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