The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Saturday 25 April 2015

APRIL 25 NEPAL EARTHQUAKE: HOW I FIRST REACTED?

  COLORES INFINITUM

I was in the washroom when it happened. Around noon, the ground started shaking.

First, as a natural reaction (yes, it is also a type with some folks), I thought I was feeling dizziness and it was stirring my whole body, the ground beneath me and the walls surrounding.

But soon, within seconds, the feeling of dizziness gave way to the feeling that I was facing tremors of an earthquake.

And it was a strong earthquake, if it was indeed a quake. It lasted for around two minutes. It shook me and the world around me pretty well.

I was at the ground floor. There were three stories above me. And I was in two minds.

As I had slept very late, the whole ‘world beneath and around and with me’ business could have been due to some ‘psychological response’ due to my dizziness.

But then, it lasted for around two minutes and was like a strong earthquake (as I had felt in the past), the logic of my dizziness was hanging around the other logic as well.

I felt its epicentre was not at a place nearby otherwise the building would have come down like a stack of cards even before I would get a chance to contemplate over it. After all, Delhi is in Zone 4, ecologically the second most quake-prone zone. Yes, but it should be a strong one as it stirred my soul.

I was even ready to die in case the building came down, if indeed it was an earthquake. Any effort to rush out, from the ground-floor washroom of the four-stories building of IP Extension, was futile because it would not give me that much time.

The time that I indeed got – to contemplate over it – to think - that made my mind thought in two ways.

So, overall, as my visage said, I was in two minds. I was attributing it to my dizziness and at the same time, I was thinking about a strong earthquake.

I came out of the washroom following my daily routine – with thoughts on these lines.

I decided to ask my younger sister and the kids of my elder sister if they felt anything like an earthquake. They were busy here and there and flatly denied experiencing it at all, except what they were doing.

So, my dizziness had an upper hand.

But the next moment, when I glanced over the news channel running on television that I had switched on before going to the washroom, the whole dizziness logic was squeezed out of my soul.

The earthquake was confirmed, a strong earthquake. The news channel was running the news of an earthquake and its shocks.

And like it happens, in case of a strong earthquake, there was an excess of information with problems of credibility leading to a sort of chaos.

The magnitude ranged from 7 to 7.5 and soon the US Geological Survey confirmed it. Its epicentre was said to be in Nepal and soon, the USGS confirmed it, saying it to be 36 Kms East of Lamjung district that is just 77 Kms from Kathmandu.

Every news channel was on it. After Nepal, it was felt strongly in India, especially in North India, with Bihar and West Bengal facing the maximum damage. News channels were running the preliminary footage while scrambling for the same. Social media was beginning to act on it.

Meanwhile, there were frantic calls to and from everyone in the family about safety and whereabouts of each of us in the family.

The information that it was indeed a strong earthquake then opened a floodgate of horror before my eyes. If it was felt so strongly across many parts of the India, what would it do to Nepal, a small impoverished Himalayan nation that is dependent on tourism to a large extent with Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, on its land?  

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/