For Anjar residents, memories of dreadful quake hauntingly fresh

Tanuba just smiles wryly but utters no word. Her daughter Truptiba, then 10, was among the 185 students who were buried alive as the 7.6-magnitude earthquake hit Kutch at 8:46 am on January 26, 2021, flattening shops and schools and houses in the old town area of Anjar. “I couldn’t see her face one last time and wave her a final goodbye as my husband sent us to our relative’s place in Gandhidham after the quake and informed me three days later that Truptiba was found dead under the rubble in Khatri Chowk. She was barely recognisable and was cremated immediately, he told me, as I mourned in Gandhidham,” the 60-year-old mother of four recounts. Her husband, Pradipsinh Zala, is a worker with Kandla Port Trust.

File photo of Truptiba Zala. (Source: AMSB)

Truptiba, the couple’s only daughter, was the youngest of their four children and was a Class 6 student at School No 14—one of the 20 primary schools run by Anjar Municipal School Board (AMSB). In fact, Shailendrasinh, Truptiba’s elder brother, who was a Class 7 student in the same school, was also part of the prabhatferi (morning march) taken out to mark the 52nd Republic Day. But he was rescued after five hours and escaped with minor injuries.

The two siblings were among around 500 upper primary students, aged between 10 and 13 years, who had assembled outside the Swaminarayan temple in the Savasar Naka area of the town at 8 am that day for taking out prabhatferi from Savasar Naka to Town Hall, says Khimji Sindhav, the then administrative officer of AMSB.

Mrudula Pandey and Bharat Shah, then Anjar municipality president and vice-president respectively, flagged off the march at around 8:25 am, teachers recall. Raising slogans, the students were marching to beats of drum through Mochi Bazar, Datar Chowk and Khatri Bazar—the narrowest stretch on the 1.5-km-long route from Savasar Naka to Town Hall when the earthquake struck.

“The marching students were hardly 150 metres away from Town Hall when buildings shook and crumbled in Khatri Chowk, burying us all,” says Khanta Vaghamsi, Kanya Shala No.1 principal who was then an assistant teacher with School No.1. “Initially, I thought some foreign country had bombed us. Then, I thought it could be some electric short-circuit. But realised it was an earthquake when I saw houses and shops crumbling. After moments of dizziness, when I regained myself, I found my lower limbs under the rubble of the roof of a shop,” Vaghamshi, a native of Anjar who was 27 years old then and suffered injuries to her spinal-cord, says.

File photo of Badal Joshi. (Source: AMSB).

While Vaghamshi was pulled out of the debris after three hours, her four colleagues—Janakben Bhatt, Kailash Antani, Hansa Patel and Praveena Delura and 39 students of School No.1 were killed. “Hansa and Praveena had children between eight and 10 years old. We could do little for our colleagues and students at that moment,” the teacher, who was able to walk after seven months, reflects. “Why are we remembering all this!” she mumbles as her eyes become moist.

But Tanuba knows why she remembers Truptiba. “Everyone celebrated Rakshabandhan on August 11 but my little daughter was not around to tie rakhi to her three brothers. I miss her the most during family functions and festivals like this,” says the mother who has no formal education.

The prabhatferi was to culminate at Town Hall where the then Anjar sub-divisional magistrate was to unfurl the Tricolour at the taluka-level Republic Day celebrations.

Now, Truptiba’s is among the 200-plus black-and-white photos on the memorial wall inside VBS. Steel cut-outs, showing a girl marching holding the Tricolour aloft and other children raising slogans, in the foreground of the museum inside VBS immortalise the school students whose Republic Day parade ended in tragedy. The incident had drawn the likes of former US President Bill Clinton to visit Khatri Chowk and pay tributes to the young victims.

Many of the buildings of the AMSB schools built post quake don’t have grounds or forecourts large enough to organise a flag-hoisting ceremony.

However, Lakshmikant Vora (76), the younger brother of Harshendubala Vora—a teacher at Girls School No.2 who was killed in Khatri Chowk during the march—says he won’t be able to visit VBS. “Should I visit the memorial and see my sister’s photo there? No, no… I will not be able to control my emotions,” says the retired civil engineer. “I’d rather continue paying tribute to my sister by offering flowers every January 26 at the small memorial built by the Indian Army at the gate of the Town Hall which is near where my sister’s last march ended,” he says, adding he has been rueing for the past 21 years as to why Harshendubala did not join him on a trip to Abu that January 26.

But Ashok Joshi, father of Badal—one the students of School No.1 who was killed in Khatri Chowk, says he will muster the courage to visit VBS once it is thrown open to visitors by the PM Sunday. “I am aware that visiting that place and seeing my son’s photo on the memorial wall will make me immensely sad. But I’ll take the solace in the fact that he has not been forgotten,” says Joshi, a fabrication worker.

Teachers are still struggling to find logical conclusions. “Many argue that children would have been safe had the march started a few minutes early or a few minutes late. But who knows for sure? People also allege teachers didn’t do enough to save children. But it was a matter of just 90 seconds. We were helpless. The chain of arguments never ends my mind. I’ve concluded that in an earthquake like that, all that matters is who is where. One will not get any time to react. This is the cruel reality,” says Mavaji Maheshwari, principal of School No.1 who was guiding the march from the front and who escaped unhurt.

The quake changed the way primary students celebrate national festivals. The schools stopped taking out prabhatferis after 2001, ending the decades-old tradition. “People felt it was no longer safe to allow children out for such events so early in the morning. So, primary schools stopped taking out prabhatferis thereafter,” says Bharat Shah who had taken over from Pandey as Anjar municipality president in July 2002.

Many of the buildings of the AMSB schools built post quake don’t have grounds or forecourts large enough to organise a flag-hoisting ceremony. “Students, therefore, join the flag-hoisting at SDM office but they reach there on their own, not in a formal march,” says Shah.

After the 2001 quake, the government and civil society organisations helped people rebuild their homes and shops in Khatri Chowk. The Anjar municipality also helped Anjar Vali Mandal build Viranjali Balbhumi—a memorial dedicated to the fallen students—in Datar Chowk, a few metres north to Khatri Chowk in 2016.

Khatri Chowk is back to the same business—selling hand-dyed clothes and raw materials needed for this art. “I came rushing from my home in the Nava Anjar area to Khatri Chowk to check on my nephew Salim and our shop but there was no trace of him and our shop was reduced to rubble. Instead, I found Kantilal Suthar saheb (a teacher of School No.3) gasping. He died in my arms, crying for help for students,” says Osman Khatri, while sitting in his shop called Salim Handicraft in Khatri Chowk.

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Salim was later found dead. He was among the 60 people from Khatri community to be killed in the quake even as the tremors left more than 4,000 dead in the town, officers of Anjar municipality say. “It was like a nightmare. But this area is our home and at one point, one has to resume life. One thing that has changed is that Khatris shifted their residence to other parts of the town while rebuilding shops here. The lane that was so narrow as to allow only one auto-rickshaw to pass through at a time is now nine metres wide,” says Mohsin Khatri (37) of Mohsin Handicraft.

Meanwhile, inside the memorial section in VBS, Aarti Sorathiya (28), a marketing executive with a private firm, struggles to keep pace with the questions of her six-year-old daughter Rita as she and her friend Darshana Sorathiya, a college student, shows the child around in fading sunlight. “Why have they pasted the photos of these children here?” Rita asks. “Chalya gaya tetla mate (Because they walked away),” the mother replies. “Where and why?” the child further probes. The mother fades for a moment. Then tells the child: “They walked up to god, as the god loved them.”