Everyone who survived this catastrophic disaster has their own experience and I also want to share mine.
As usual, I got up at 5 o' clock in the morning that Saturday and prepared myself to attend the Saturday test that the bridge course institute I was studying in used to conduct every weekend. The 1.15 hour long test started at 8 AM and was held at Padma Kanya Campus in Bagbazaar.The test went pretty well that day, and I was home by 10 AM. Then I had my lunch, rested for a while, and started watching the popular Hindi TV show 'Comedy Nights with Kapil'. I was with a relative grandmother who was guest at my home when everything around started shaking.
I was sitting on a low bed and the tremor was so strong that it could have any moment thrown me out of the bed had I not managed to hold the side of the bed tightly. Seriously, I could not believe what I was experiencing was real. But it was!
As soon as the shaking lessened, I turned off the TV, gas and other electrical appliances and all of us in the house rushed outside to the open field in front of our house. I was happy that all of us in my family survived unharmed, but when the radio started airing news of the damage and loss of lives in many places of Nepal including the Capital, I was really sad.
When I learned that the nine-storied Dharahara was now reduced to rubbles, I couldn't believe the news. Then followed reports about the destruction of our Durbar Squares. Despair filled in as reports of death tolls kept coming in throughout the day, increasing every other time. It seemed that the time had stopped and the world was going to an end on that fateful day. The fearful aftershocks continued to come every now and then throughout that day, and it continues till date. So our family members and some of the neighbors started building a temporary tent like all of the others did. We lived under the makeshift shelter for two days and shifted to the ground floor of our house on the third day. We mustered up enough courage to move back to the second floor only on the fourth day.
In Nepal, like many experts have pointed out, unplanned physical structures are the major cause of the large number of death toll. It is therefore extremely important for the government to make and formulate strict national building code to prevent people from building houses and other structures haphazardly. Since Japan is also a country that is in a seismic prone zone, we could adopt Japanese style of construction and see into what earthquake-resistant structures we can take on from them.
The heritage sites that have been largely affected by the earthquake should be rebuilt in such a way that another tremor can't do much to bring it down again.
Since we're still prone to earthquakes in the future, prevention is better than cure. We should all be well prepared to deal with tremors.
Sagar took this year's SLC exams from Bhanu Bhakta Memorial School in Pani Pokhari, Kathmandu, and is awaiting his results.
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