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Photo Essay – God Bless Kathmandu, Nepal

by The Delhi Walla - 4

That city, its people, its temples.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The Delhi Walla was the on the 16th floor of a building when the earthquake tremors shook Delhi on April 25, 2015. Like everybody else on that floor, I too ran down the stairs. And while I thought I would die, I was not feeling particularly horrified. And I made sure to pick up my camera, my shoulder bag and my book of the day (Madame Bovary). This means that either I’m very materialistic or, perhaps, I want to live for some more time.

But that quake killed many people in Kathmandu, Nepal. I had visited that city in 2013, and had walked down its many lanes and had taken many photographs. Now, those photographs have acquired a horrible beauty in the light of what has happened.

Just Kathmandu

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Related posts:

  1. City Travel – Pashupatinath Temple, Kathmandu
  2. City Travel – Hindu/Buddhist Heritage, Kathmandu
  3. Photo Essay – La Hune Bookstore’s Second Life, Paris
  4. Photo Essay – The Shadow People, Lodhi Road
  5. Photo Essay – Disappeared People, Around Town
The Delhi Walla

4 thoughts on “Photo Essay – God Bless Kathmandu, Nepal”

  1. So glad the Delhiwala escaped the earthquake with his his book and his camera. To say nothing of his sense of priorities. Terrible sadness about the disaster.

    1. Going by his track record , I don’t want to be anywhere near god or his multifarious blessings.

  3. It breaks my heart to see such devastation ! I wish we had cities that incorporated the ever-present threat of a massive earthquake into their general plans. Almost all of the destruction that was witnessed in Kathmandu was due to overcrowding and poor structural integrity. It amazes me how people continue to inhabit stage-sets all the while thinking that they would somehow be spared the arbitrary outbursts of sheer natural forces. The humanizing myths of Hinduism etc. further shore up this absurd and eventually detrimental stance. It is time to shake off the anesthetic. We must come to grips with the fact that we inhabit a world that is essentially indifferent. Nature is not controlled by some ‘god’ and praying to ‘him’ doesn’t do squat. Thanks to scientific advances, we have designs and structures that can actually survive major earthquakes and thus prevent needless obliteration.

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