ca. 15 July 2010

Early after sunrise

 

It’s over. Whatever it was, it has ended. By my calculation, it has been more than a month since that day it all began. This is the first time I’ve desired to sit and put my thoughts on paper. There were days of paralysis and terror, and then numbness. Now, we are bent on survival.

There is now only one other survivor besides Devi and myself. A young man named James.

After the first earthquakes and terrible storms, many of us gathered together at the elementary school. We thought it was merely something we could wait out. But then three days, maybe four, after the events began, people began to die.

Devi tried, and I helped, and so did others, but they fell as well. Devi could find nothing wrong with the people who died, and my beloved doctor was worn ragged and weary by his inability to save any of them. 

Now, weeks later when the grief is not so raw, he theorizes that it was some sort of poison gas or biochemical event caused by the physical upheaval of the earth and its storms. 

It appears that for some reason, Devi, James and I were immune to whatever it was.

A miracle, perhaps. Or perhaps it is not a miracle to have been left to live when so many have died.

But I cannot deny that still having Devi with me is a miracle of grand proportion.

We have no access to the Internet, to cell phones. Even a radio, running on electricity from a small generator, gives nothing but static or silence.

 

– from the diary of Mangala Kapoor