My experience with the Big One!!!

11th March, Friday, 02:36PM

It was Friday and an officially day-off for me. So I had had a lazy morning and got up at around 1 in the noon (don't go into the details of my sleeping habits). I was hungry so I started cooking something for myself (yeah, no kidding!). Just when I was done, I could feel the floor moving slightly. For a second I thought maybe I am still not completely out of my sleep but soon realized that it’s an earthquake!

Now for the starters, earthquake in Japan is as common a thing as a cricket match between India and Sri Lanka. They keep happening from time to time and nobody gives a damn (unless its a world cup final). So when I knew that it’s an earthquake, I took it very lightly at first. I thought it's just one of those usual ones and will stop within seconds. But to my surprise it didn't. It just kept on shaking and getting bigger and bigger every second. I was hardly able to stand still, forget walking. Things started falling from shelf and whole house started rocking. Never before had I seen something like this in my life. I still had faith in Japanese architects and engineers that nothing would happen but didn't want to take any chances. So I ran out of my flat for the stairs. At the stairs I saw couple of Japanese construction workers. One of them was scared to death. I could see the fear on his face and that's when I was sure that this was something big. Even the Japanese people are worried! Just when I was about to go down it stopped. Everything was calm again so I ran back to my room to get in touch with my friends and colleagues. The phone lines were down but fortunately the internet was still up and running. I was able to talk to my friends in Tokyo and family back in India.

Just when I thought that everything was back to normal, it started shaking again. Damn it, I was not even able to have my food! This time again it was quite a big one so I grabbed my wallet and ran for my life. I didn't stop at anything and went straight to the ground floor. I saw lot of people gathered outside the building. There was a group of Indian women with their kids and bags. It looked as if they are all set to head back to India at that very moment! I waited for everything to cool down, grabbed a nice cup of coffee and spent some time alone sitting on a bench and reliving those moments. Sitting there it still felt as if the land was floating on top of flowing lava.

Later, I thought of taking a stroll and see what the situation elsewhere was. I reached the railway station and saw some unbelievable scenes out there. The train lines were down so people were queuing up for the buses and the taxis. There were long queues for bus, taxi and outside the phone booths. But surprisingly there was no chaos whatsoever. People let others finish with their calls and waited for their chance patiently. One more unbelievable and incomprehensible scene was that there was a long queue outside a gaming parlour!! As most of the train lines went down, that night people had to walk as far as 15-20kms back home. My friend/roommate had to walk around 10kms before he could get a train back home.

There was no major damage reported due to the earthquake and the credit for this goes to the architects and their technology behind this. But it was really scary and heartbreaking to see the havoc caused by the subsequent tsunami. The horrific scenes of villages getting swept off by water was something never before seen and we hope that we don’t have to see it again.