What’s intact are the memories of disasters. Disturbing, alienating and sad. How does one begin to write about something that escapes one’s own experience? How does one begin in the aftermath of another disaster that brings back the trauma and the despair of the disasters one witnessed or was part of, directly or indirectly. Like the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria that have killed more than 40,000 people. The tremors spread. Into the memory zone. And the old question returns—Why?
Over the years, I have witnessed a few natural hazards that turned into disasters. Like the Uttarakhand floods in 2013, the Kashmir floods in 2014, the Nepal earthquake in 2015 and the forest fires of Uttarakhand in 2016. I have always wondered how one writes about disaster, and if one can at all. If one can give memory its due. We collected testimonies. We filed reports. We moved on to other stories until the next earthquake or flood struck. When the earthquake hit, we knew we had carried memories of other disasters to it. Those faces reappeared. Those images flashed again.
