A Shake-Up and a Wake-Up
On the 28th of March, when the quake shook the clay ground beneath Bangkok, it found both the inhabitants and the government unprepared and confused. We, that is my husband and I, were then in Almaty, Kazakhstan; a week into visiting our daughter, an elementary principal in an international school, with another week to go before returning to Bangkok, via Delhi. We were having a whirlwind of a fun time in this clean, well-planned, and awesomely beautiful city; sightseeing and eating out, and totally enjoying being pampered by our daughter and granddaughter, a last-year student in the same international school. It was supposedly springtime there, but Google said -8 degrees Celsius, and the photos my daughter regularly shared on our family chat showed snow. So, I, an over-planner, packed long johns, gloves, mufflers, caps, sweaters, jackets, and even an overcoat. But when we landed, it was a comfortable 20 degrees Celsius, and I chided myself for being overprepared, that too, for the wrong weather.
Then, on the third day, I gasped as I drew the curtains; the whole landscape was as beautiful as what we’d seen on the chats: snowcapped mountains, rooftops, and trees; a scenery that remained for the rest of our trip, doing full justice to my packing.
On the night of the 27th, I retired early to the welcoming warmth of the quilted rajai, only to be awoken by the bed shaking under me in the wee hours of the 28th. The chandelier wasn’t swinging, but I know what a quake is. My youngest daughter and I are survivors of the Great Hanshin quake; supposedly the biggest quake in recent history. Neither of us was quite over the trauma, as we immediately relocated to Bangalore and lost out badly on the opportunity to vent the fears, apprehensions, and experiences with those who would understand because they were there in Kobe that fateful morning of 17 January 1995.
The next morning, when we were excitedly sharing the night’s experience on the family WhatsApp group chat, suddenly, my son and my daughter in Bangkok were saying something about running out of the building, and some other incoherent and confusing babble; their reaction to a minor Kazakh quake the night before didn’t make sense. It was 10:50 am for us there, but with the two-hour time difference, simultaneously, Bangkok was heaving and swaying, sending waves of panic and fear.
My son sent pictures of himself outside his workplace, and then my daughter was gibbering about something, but she was safe at home. Now, we're afraid for our 12-year-old granddaughter, who’d be in school and out of reach. Then we wondered how our seven-year-old grandson was, and although his mother worked at the same school, they couldn’t have been together.
One can try comforting oneself by saying, "It’s ok, everybody is fine," but then there’s the nagging fear: what if?! The apprehension gnawed at us; it was worrisome and scary that everyone was in different places and separated by distances. Neither could I reach my house staff, since they’d also been evacuated from the apartment. There’s nothing we could have done from Almaty, or even if we were in Bangkok, here in person. At such times, all one can do is hope and pray. Meanwhile, I tried all I could, but the scenes of that long-ago ’95 resurfaced; my tummy gave way and had yet to settle.
Eventually, thankfully, word started trickling in; my son, working within walking distance, was the first to reach home. We still couldn’t get hold of my daughter-in-law and wondered how she and my grandson were faring. Eventually, with all public transportation at a complete halt and the snarled traffic, they had no option but to walk all the way from deep within Soi 39. We could only imagine how tired and confused the poor chap must have been.
With no BTS service, our granddaughter, who normally catches it from her Bang Na school, was stranded. My daughter came to the rescue and picked her up with her car, but with the knotted traffic, they both couldn’t make it to Soi 11. So, my daughter took a U-turn somewhere and took her to her house in Soi 47. Much later that evening, she walked her niece all the way to our place in Soi 11.
This is an experience that’ll not be soon forgotten, and neither should it be. It’s a wake-up call from Mother Nature and one that shouldn’t be ignored. She wants local leaders to sit up and become stringent with the rampant high-rise construction and the building standards; also, immediate actions are to be taken to tackle our polluted skies and waterways. We, every one of us, living here in our ‘Amazing Thailand’, must come to the rescue; let’s try to minimise our individual carbon footprints and value our natural resources a little more!