I was in Bug during the earthquake. Survivor stories

At 8.46 am on India’s 55th Republic Day in 2001, an earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale devastated Bhuj in Gujarat.

Images of devastation and destruction are still engraved in our minds. The loss of life, property, and livelihoods was unprecedented, and everything looked bleak. This is what the 2001 earthquake in Boj did.

Akshat Chaturvedi, who was 22 years old at the time, was an earthquake survivor. Since then, he has continued to rebuild not only his life, but also the lives of many others in his community.

Speaking to The Better India, he said, “Kutch is my home, where I grew up. It is known to be a disaster prone area, but none of us prepared what happened in 2001.” A lover of theater, he was a part of the Kutchi movie project at the time, and he tells me how he finished a clip on January 25, 2001 and went to bed late in the evening.

“I remember waking up on the morning of January 26th and seeing everything around me shiver.” Akshat during a community awareness program.

“My first thought was to access my computer, because I didn’t want the screen to fall and shatter. I was on the second floor and realized I had nowhere to run. If I had to die, it would be in that room,” he says. Akshat recalls how arduous those two minutes were. Chaos was everywhere, and no one knew what hit them.

“People ran away from their homes anyway – some of them were showering and ran out of them completely naked, while others were still in bed when the earthquake struck and they fell in their night clothes,” he continues.

“After the shaking stopped, I was on the streets trying to see how I could help me. The pictures I saw will remain etched in my memory forever. Mutilated corpses, mountains of rubble and rubble, and everything around me is broken. No street was left, and everywhere you look To him, people are stranded. “

Like most children, Akshat also remembers reading about earthquakes when he was young. But until that day, he hadn’t tried one. “Within minutes, many of us became homeless and had to spend the next month camping in tents outside our homes, because we were not sure when the aftershock would have occurred,” he recalls.

You lost everything – go and save yourself

“While I was walking on the streets, I came to this house where only the door frame was intact, and everything inside collapsed. An elderly woman, in her early eighties, sat with her skull exposed to the blood bleeding from it,” Akshat says, recalling how the woman looked stunned. He asked if he could take her to the nearby clinic to have her wound checked, but she refused. She looked at what was left of the house and said she had lost everything. I asked Akshat to go ahead and find safety.

“Her words still came back to me. She said that I couldn’t do anything to her, and she asked me to go and find shelter.”

Stools orientation exercise for disaster response in Botswana.

“An old woman was dying here, but even at that moment, she was urging me to find a safe place,” he says. Akashat remembers the fear he felt walking the streets that day and says it was a feeling that he would never be able to get rid of.

With all the loss he saw around him, what also astonished him was the amazing resilience the inhabitants of Bhuj had shown. He says the way the entire community came together and worked to rebuild their home instilled hope in him.

These experiences shaped Akshat’s life and career. He now works with the World Bank as a consultant for the Disaster Risk Management Program. He has since also volunteered with the United Nations (UN) to work with NGOs dedicated to earthquake rehabilitation work. “I remember volunteering with the United Nations, without even realizing it was a big problem. I learned everything on the go,” he says.

Akshat’s work, which focused all on disaster management, has taken him to countries such as Botswana, Bangkok and Japan. He is now a resident of Washington, DC.

To showcase the spirit of the Boj people, Akshat sponsored a book titled Resilience in Kutch, Stories of Quake Survivors in Bahuj. Some excerpts from the book are as follows.

Photographer who lost his arm, Harish Barikh

Harish, who comes from a paparazzi family, not only lost his arm on that fateful day, he also lost his wife, 13-year-old daughter, and 15-month-old son, who were all crushed by the water tank. While life was terribly unfair to Harish, what one notices immediately is the smile he wears and the resilience he carries in his heart. “I have to smile. If you worry too much, it only benefits the doctor,” he says.

There was a time when I couldn’t get out of my house. Now I feel like I can do anything. Janab Khoja

For Janab, January 26, 2001 was a holiday that she was looking forward to. The day before, when she was preparing her bath water, she felt everything around her vibrate. Trying to escape from the house, Janab and her husband Altaf were trapped under a mountain of rubble and were severely injured during the operation. Despite having undergone seven surgeries and losing her right arm, Janab survived but lost the love of her life. Today, she has her independence in the form of her own apartment, the hard work selling snacks and candy at a local school, and the strength she built from her experiences in the years following the earthquake.

“Even before the actual earthquake, my life was in shambles,” Mayapa said

Mayapa, who was pregnant during the 2001 earthquake, was carrying a daughter, and found herself in a troubled marriage, as her husband did not want a girl. Mayaba’s husband and his family have made it clear that they will not pay for the baby’s presence. During this time the earthquake struck, leaving Mayapa’s lower body permanently damaged. With no chance of recovery, I slipped into depression and attempted suicide several times. It was her daughter, Chetnaba, who was asked to have an abortion, who saved her life and gave her a reason to live. Today, mother and daughter are good friends, and they share a very special bond. She says, “My daughter is my everything.”

These stories, and more, of human resilience, are captured beautifully throughout the book. To request a copy, you can click here.

(Edited by Divya Sethu)

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