Have You Heard The Sound Of Earth?

Happy Republic Day, to begin with.

From January 26, 2001 on, the significance of Republic Day has changed for me, and perhaps, for all of Gujarat. A much destructive earthquake chose to happen on a date one cannot possibly ignore even by choice.

It was 9 a.m., and as usual, I was sleeping. I had slept off the previous night urging everyone to wake me before the Republic Day parade began at any cost, for I wanted to see an uncle who was going to lead a battalion. We were just fresh from the glory and grief of Kargil and he had made us all proud by coming back from the treacherous peaks successful.

I heard the shouts of my aaji and my sister, but that was normal when they wanted me to wake up, so I ignored the faint, far away to and fro of instructions. I was in deep slumber when I felt I was shaking all over, in fact, that the entire bed was.

In that dreamy, semi conscious state of mind, I assumed it was my sister have gone nuts and was trying to wake me up. Seriously, that's what I thought. And then, the entire bed started shaking too furiously for me to ignore it anymore. Almost preceding this tremendous rattle by a split second was the most ominous sound of my life: the sound of earth. The sound of a furious, fearsome earth.

It started out as a mild, concentrated groan and increased exponentially. In the next second, the circular drumming sound was throbbing right through the bed, and all over me. It was not scary. It was sinister. In a second, I was wide awake, and in the next I had jumped out of the bed.