End of the World

End of the world?

The streets are empty, the once crowded vegetable market is deserted, and there is not a single person to be seen in the area. The people move to the plain areas as the greatest of the Earthquake is going to hit the place. The epicenter is the mountainous regions so everyone leaves for the plain.

Before that, I go to a very big vegetable market located on the mountain, there are  lots of people there, some shopping, some looking at the great statue of Buddha on the huge cliff. From the Buddha’s statue the holy water flows. There are few people who have come there as a pilgrimage and they drink the holy water. I too go there and drink the water from that place.

 To my utter dismay, I see the people swollen with wounds, deformed due to that holy water they drank. I am confused, ‘How can these happen?’ My thoughts are drifted to the coming of end of the present Buddha and the start of Future Buddha. ‘So that’s the intermediate state.’ I think. Everyone pray and I too join them. I close my eyes and when I open it I find the wounds disappear fast. Then I move to the plains of Paro to save myself from the greatest of the Tragedy that befall Humans (or should I say Bhutanese?).

On the Day of the catastrophe, the earth engulfs the huge mountains, the houses and everything of the mountains. The air swirls the earth’s component like a Tornado. It is the biggest of this kind I have ever seen. I felt like watching it in a television. I see how the mountain and the structure being consumed fast by the angry earth.  I hear the roar, ‘Boom !dung!,   and feel the shaking of the earth. There is the bombardment of the structures. To me, the earth looked extremely wrathful, as she had no mercy upon her inhabitants and their dwellings. People struggle and  run so fast from this disaster.

Thank God no person is killed.  The only death was of a woman who gets short circuit after she returns from the plains to her home. Her daughter takes off fuse from the main circuit and the woman is thrown due to shock by the current. She dies as the girls try to put off the electric fire by water.

After the disaster, I go to vegetable market once more. But this time there is only one Indian vendor selling vegetables. I ask him where other has gone. He does not answer. He says something I do not understand. I leave him.

I return back to my village. I find two of my sisters and my mom grief-stricken. As I go into my storeroom, there is not a single grain left; there are no vegetables and no fruits. Everything we have stored had disappeared.

To Guru, the one borrn from lotus, I pray hard to him.  I seek refuge in him for the catastrophe that has taken place. ‘Dhe Sum Sangay Guru Rinpoche….Sampa lhuenge Drupa Jinge Lo,’ ‘Hu Ugyen Yue gu Nub Jnag Tsham……Guru Padma Sidi Hu…..’ I continuously chant these prayers. I see everything return, the grains, the vegetables, all the things we had stored.

As I open my eyes, I  still find myself chanting those prayers but drenched in sweat. There is complete silence  and it is 4.30 am in the morning. I am still in my bed. But that BOOM and DUNG sound is still echoing in my head. The image of the present Buddha on that huge cliff is still vivid.

Is this the way humanity is going to come to end? Will we have a place to run away if we encounter such catastrophe? Or will we be simply engulfed by the angry mother earth?