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'If the building fell, I wanted all of us to die together...'

It probably was not the ideal way to wake up in the morning.

Or for that matter to begin India's 51st Republic Day, but it sure added some excitement to what was a long weekend for most people.

For Cheryl Netto living in Santa Cruz, western Bombay, who was standing in the kitchen, her first reaction at the earthquake "was that I felt giddy. I thought it was my worst nightmare come true and that the building was falling down. I instinctively picked up my four-month-old baby who had started crying and wanted to run down the stairs with my husband. But we had only managed to get out of the door when the tremors subsided."

But the warning signs were all there, says Cheryl, especially when the dog on the 5th floor of their building started barking loudly and the crows outside started flapping wildly a few minutes before the earthquake actually happened

Bharati Mittal from Borivli, in north Bombay, says all her neighbours from the adjoining buildings had already started running down from their homes and were yelling and screaming by the time she realised it was an earthquake. "The noise in the house with all the glass panes rattling was deafening. It sounded like that they would break any minute. I was really scared and so were my neighbours, especially a newly married couple who just kept holding on to each other throughout the entire experience. She was in tears and just could not fathom what was happening."

What comes across is that most people don't know what to do or what not to do for that matter in an earthquake. Says Kaushal Dayal, a resident of a seven-storied building in Goregaon, north Bombay, "I stopped my neighbour who was running into a lift and told him to take the stairs instead. But beyond that, it was just a lot of chaos and cacophony."

Others who were scared also chose to stay indoors. Explains an emotional Mrs Karkera, "I thought if something has to happen, let it happen while we are all together. If the building had to fall or we all had to die, then I wanted all of us to do so together. So the thought of running down the stairs did not even cross my mind."

But there are others who will look back at it as a funny incident. Like S Shailaja, residing in a working women's hostel in Bandra who was rudely woken up when the girls from the topmost floors of her hostel started yelling and running down. "It was very funny to watch because they were just screaming and running about like it was the end of the world. They thought the building would collapse because it was actually moving like a pendulum, from one end to the other."

Many others thought it was their active imagination running wild. Laughing at the experience, Shrikant Srinivasan from Chembur, central-eastern Bombay who had logged on to the Net at the time says, "When I looked at my computer screen shaking, I thought I was still fuzzy in my head because I had just woken up! But then I called my mother to check when it continued shaking for a while who told me that it was an earthquake. I opened the door to find the neighbours outside. Then the stories of other earthquakes that people had been through came up..."

According to M C Bhide residing in Mahim, it was a very minor earthquake. "I have lived through the Koyna one in December 1967 so I was not scared when it happened. Being a civil engineer, I knew it was an earthquake and so stayed put, ate my breakfast on a dining table which continued shaking and waited for it to subside."

And then there are those who missed all the excitement. Like L Pereira from Malad who slept through the entire earthquake, or Paraidhi Agarwal who was busy working at architect Nitin Desai's office in Mulund and didn't even feel the tremors: "There was an earthquake? In Bombay? Don't pull a fast one on me please!"

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EXTERNAL LINKS:

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The RD Killer Quake of Jan 26, 2001: Technical details
What we can do to assist earthquake victims in India
All about earthquakes in India and their impact
India Meteorological Department's earthquake reports
Disaster relief set-up in India
Major earthquakes across the world in recent times
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