The earthquake occurred in the early morning, waking all of
us up instantly. We were all sleeping on the floor as usual, but earth under us
moved to and fro as if we were all sleeping on a giant swing, and we could not
understand what was happening at first. We were all frightened, Sanju suggested
we recite Ramaraksha and we all started reciting it in earnest. This went on for
what felt like eternity, but could not have been more than a few minutes. After
the movement stopped and everything was quite still, we rushed out of the house
and assembled in the front courtyard. All the members of the landlord’s family
had already gathered here, who, like us, were in their night-dresses, and
there, in the sight of other people, we recovered enough to talk animatedly
about the experience.
As it turned out, this was not altogether a novel experience
for some from the landlord’s family, who used to live at Koyananagar, where
earthquakes had occurred previously, but of course, they were of a smaller
magnitude. We later learnt the devastating effects of this quake, which had
caused havoc in Koyananagar and surrounding area near the epicentre of the
earthquake. Our school was converted into a makeshift hospital to cater to the
large number of people who were caught in the collapsing buildings and suffered
injuries. After this quake, there were many aftershocks, and I remember
sleeping out on the street en masse, for fear that the house would collapse
over our head and later we moved to Kolhapur for a few months as the school was
closed and we were given temporary admission in Vidyapeeth High School near
Ambabai Temple in Kolhapur.
Surprisingly, there was virtually no damage to the structure
of the house we lived in, mainly because it was a single storied structure with
brick walls and a lightweight roof of steel sheets. So after a few months, we
came back and continued to live in the same house as if nothing was amiss. I
continued with my studies, and it was about an year after that I tried to take
my life for reasons I can not remember, nor justify in any way.
As I recollect, we had a few choice locations for study, which
I had found out with my friends in the school. One was under the old bridge
over Koyana, where there was a gap between the steel girders and top of the
stone pier of the bridge. This was quite high up and tricky to reach from the
road at top but not really scary as the pier was very wide and the height of
girder was about 6’, giving a good headroom. The other location was inside the
shikhar (roof) of a deserted temple on the bank of the river, which was
slightly dark inside but gave enough light from the opening to enable us to
read if we sat just near the opening. It was in this location I tried drinking
Tic-20, an insecticide, but apart from its horrible taste it turned out to be
quite harmless. I have forgotten where I procured the bottle or why I did it,
but remember that I felt relieved after I found out it did not work.
Much later, in an IIA seminar on character building, we were
discussing the fears and loss of self-confidence in the young who are unable to
accept the reality about them; I disagreed with the speaker and said nobody can
feel insecure about his physical features or appearance, which is genetically
programmed, but later recalled this incident and felt there might be some truth
in this after all, as I recall no other reason for me to be so unhappy as to
try to take my own life at the time.
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