Tuesday, September 14, 2004

When it quaked

I was recently browsing through my friend's (guru) blog. He wrote about the recent earthquake in Japan (that is where he is working right now). I was actually a bit surprised when he mentioned how apathetic his Japanese colleagues were to the earthquake, which indicates how common quakes were in Japan. Reading through his experience refreshed my memories about my experience with an earthquake.

If I remember right, I was in my 5th semester at IIT-Madras. It was around 9:00pm and I was in my room by the "study" table, listening to Kishore on my philips radio. Magoo (my neighbor) was sitting on the bed and we were discussing about the burning issues related to humankind (you know what I mean). Then for a moment the table in front of me began to shake. The radio toppled. And the chair I was sitting on began to rock. Having absolutely no clue of what was happening, I stood up. The floor beneath my feet was vibrating. I thought that it might be the ceiling fan in the room below mine. Before I could think of any more creative reasons for the way the floor was behaving, mico (a room neighbor)ran by the corridor shouting "Junta, Save your lives ... its an earthquake". For a fraction of a second Magoo and I stared at each other and fled out of the building, knocking on Guru's door enroute. This guy, as usual, was playing Quake and must have imagined the tremors to be a part of the game. But not for long, he too ran out soon.


Almost everyone in the hostel was outside and was discussing the situation intensely. The discussions ranged from "thank you god for keeping me alive" to guessing the number of people killed by the "massive" earthquake (ahem .. I too was involved and was debating on the number). Some people cursed the earthquake since they felt it was disturbing their mugging, and went back to their rooms as soon as the tremors stopped. Of course, that was the opportunity we needed and our gumbal chatted away to glory outside the hostel that night discussing strategies how to survive an earthquake :D

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I dint run out..actually, i dint know there was something like an earthquake too..In fact, i was listening to songs with my headphones on and hadnt heard of the knock. After a while i came out(at my leisure) only to saw all the hostel assembled in the quadrangle...Wierd!!! was the first idea i got into mind...i went down to ask and then only came to know that i lived thru the 2nd earthquake of my life w/o me noticing it..of course the count right now is 4/5..and i felt only one..talk of thick insensitive skin!

10:28 AM  
Blogger totti said...

Yeah..that was a unique experience..nitin jaiswal went to phone his parents..i kept my door open all night just in case ..it quaked again then i can run my a** off...:))

3:38 AM  
Blogger totti said...

Those pics look pseud. There is a metallica concert in NJ pretty soon..thinking of going there..but dunno yet..

7:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey totti ... don't miss that man. It is a totally rockingly awesome experience.

Don

7:54 AM  

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