Descriptive: When the Earth Shook: A Night of Survival

 I was getting ready to sleep. I decided to go for a walk nearby. Few people around me, were alone, while others were with their loved ones. The room near my hut was a public house, that anyone could visit at any time, they wanted to. The gyms were closed at the night time. People were either watching IPL/news or were eating dinner. Everyone was in a good mood.

The news channels were warning us that something's gonna happen. No one of us understood this statement. We thought that it would be heavy rainstorms coming. We didn't think about anything else coming up. So we prepared ourselves, before the rainstorms.

Everything was as usual. The night workers working on a project on the new bridge, that could connect to Leh Ladakh's main road.

We stayed in an old public room; there were many people near us, hence we had to adjust ourselves and sleep in there. Although we didn't have beds, pillows and blankets, we made beds, by taking any available mattresses and putting them directly on the floors. It was rough, as it wasn't made of cotton. And for the blankets, we used to mostly use our towels, but if our towels were wet, we used to borrow bedsheet covers from neighbours and share them between the two of us.

The sky was dark, and the weather was cold, and windy at midnight. The area was completely silent. Everyone was sleeping, except me. I was roaming out in the woods searching for a washroom.

The old brown shelver banged. The buildings started to dance. Everyone wasn't able to understand anything, the news channels mentioned the heavy rainfall and not the earthquake. The windows started cracking. The cupboard was about to fall on me, unfortunately, I was saved. The staircase shuddered.

As soon as I blinked, everything started to fall, and we ran as fast as the cheetah. The workers hurried and they ran, and then they jumped into the lake. Thinking that the lake would save them. The half-worked bridge fell upon them. The cars were upside down and were bouncing up and down like bumpy bouncy balls. The neighbouring house was like the Earth tilted on its axis.

In my single-storey building, I could definitely see the floor rippling and moving. On the second floor of the building, I could see the floor moving but also the walls. The walls start with the ripples but, then start doing a circular motion.

We all were rescued from the lifeboats and were taken to a safer island. We were shocked, tired and sad. Several of us cried and wept the tears up. Children were separated from their parents, friends and families. While some of them had to build the house again.

In the end, many people were dead. Most of them were hurt. We had to pick up, the main, important and needed things that were torn into pieces. The brickwork was like the smashed potato waiting to be mixed with the bowl full of veggies and masalas.