A Day of Earthquakes and Coincidence, A coincidence of discussing earthquakes and feeling tremors on the same day.
In 2005, when I was in 8th grade, a seemingly ordinary Saturday took a remarkable turn. My maternal aunt and my 6-year-old cousin were visiting, and while my mom and aunt went out shopping in the morning, my cousin and I were left at home. The day was quiet and uneventful until my dad brought home a couple of hardbound Discovery Channel Encyclopedia books—one on ‘Animals’ and the other on ‘Earth.’ We decided to dive into the ‘Earth’ encyclopedia, exploring fascinating topics like earthquakes, tornadoes, and tsunamis. My cousin’s endless curiosity made the morning engaging as we flipped through the pages.
As we reached the section on ‘Earthquakes,’ he asked, “Bhaiyya, how do earthquakes occur?” Just as I was about to answer, I felt a sudden tremor. I sprang up, shocked, while my cousin, too young to grasp the gravity of the situation, looked around in confusion. I grabbed him and ran to the balcony, where people had already gathered in the park below, visibly unsettled. I quickly locked the house and descended with my cousin, the coincidence of our discussion and the quake leaving us both stunned. That day marked the 2005 Kashmir Earthquake, and my cousin remains the sole witness to our peculiar experience.
The story didn’t end there. A few nights later, while I was preparing for sleep, the memory of the coincidence still fresh in my mind, I felt tremors again. Unsure if it was a figment of my imagination or a real event, I turned on the news to find that minor tremors had indeed been reported across Delhi that night. I turned off the TV and lay in bed, overwhelmed by the strange and unsettling recurrence of seismic activity. The experience left me in a state of disbelief, haunted by the bizarre synchronicity of it all…….
