Well, well! Now if this isn't the Mother of all coincidences!
When the entire town was busy with (in the following order) either updating their FB profiles, checking up with their relatives, pissing their pants, or generally being a wuss in the throes of the earthquake, I was comfortably nestled in one of those comfy seats of a movie theater, watching the Daddy of all monsters, Godzilla give some serious mouth-to-mouth to a very distressed creature.
And the scene was an absolute 'blast' in every possible way; the entire hall shook from the thud and crash and unknown to me, the world outdoors was experiencing similar tremors as well!
But the fact that the day would be no ordinary one made itself clear when I was walking out of the theatre. I was standing there at the gates, when an auto-rickshaw rode past me and parked right in front. I watched, wide-eyed with sheer disbelief, as about half a village came out of that vehicle. One. Two. Three... Six. Seven... I lost the will to count after 10, and yet, guy after guy kept tumbling out. And they came in all shapes and sizes, too.
The Man of the family was the last to get out, with his daughter's elbow shoved upto his throat, and a slipper in his arm-pits. I looked at this family that was half the population of Somalia, and for a second, thought that maybe this was a congregation visiting the nearest church. But then, nobody was saying "Father"; it was all a barrage of "Papa!"
I walked upto the driver of the auto-rickshaw who was now, quite understandably, facing some issues with re-starting the vehicle. He told me that atleast five of them had traveled horizontally. I asked him whether he had experienced the earthquake. He said- "Yeah, for the past 30 minutes." and then began muttering curses under his breath in a steady torrent.
And boy... you should have heard that rap- the vocabulary was simply out of this world, and the lines were quite innovative too. He had cleverly replaced the 'mother' word with 'father' in all his curses (which strangely felt justified to me) and kept raining abuses till his heart, or his jaw, hurt from any further venting
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| overcrowding of vehicles in India |