Quake blurs border, brings people closer

Prithvijit Mitra | Apr 30, 2015, Pashupatinath (India-Nepal border): It couldn't have been a more agonizing wait for Nima Elmo. Angst-ridden, starved and without sleep for three days, Elmo waited several hours to receive his cousin Deepesh Rai's body at Pashupatinath on India-Nepal border on Wednesday.

Rai (25) had gone to Kathmandu last week to visit a relative. He and his two friends got buried under the debris of the Dharahara tower that collapsed in Kathmandu during the devastating quake last Saturday.

"I will have to take the body back to Darjeeling, where we live. I have no idea if they are sending his friends' remains as well," said Elmo. Every thirty minutes, he kept enquiring with Shashastra Seema Bal (SSB) officers if the truck carrying the bodies had reached the border. But every time, he had to return to a corner of the camp that the SSB had set up to attend to the injured in the border area and sit on his haunches. A van waited near the checkpost to transport the body back to Darjeeling.

There were scores like Elmo who waited endlessly to receive the injured or deceased relatives or to enquire about those missing across the border in Nepal. Information kept trickling in through the day along with the bodies and the injured who had a close shave.

Dewal Chhetri, a labourer working in Darjeeling, was among the lucky few who escaped the disaster. He jumped from the first-floor balcony of his ancestral home near Kathmandu and fractured his leg. "The entire city of Kathmandu has been ruined. You could see bodies wherever you looked," said Chhetri. He is undergoing treatment at the SSB camp on the border.

The earthquake scare prevails at Pashupatinath. The market on the border, which is famous for cheap electronic goods, garments and cosmetics would be frequented by hundreds of shoppers from either side of the border till Saturday. The quake has left the market deserted. On Wednesday, it reopened after being shut for three consecutive days. But shop-owners were apprehensive and feared a repeat of the devastating tremor. The area along with the market was shaken by a violent aftershock on Monday evening.

"Life was limping back to normalcy, but the fresh tremors became a setback," said Hombahadur Gurung, president of Samuday Seva Kendra in Pashupati, Nepal.

Scores from Nepal have been crossing over to India to spend the nights out in the open. "There's fear everywhere and business is down. But the tremor has brought the people of the two countries closer. I spent two nights on the Indian side of Pashupati and it felt like home," said Yogya Gurung, a shop-owner at the market.

For the bereaved like Elmo, such camaraderie was of little consolation, though. He wished that the authorities on either side of the border had taken the initiative to get things moving faster. "We managed to get the body transported back with great difficulty. Yes, the authorities helped, but there was little information reaching us from across the border in Nepal," rued Elmo.