I am writing this because recently I met on entrepreneur from Mumbai who recollected that day of darkness and how their hope was burried those days.

2001 January 26: Massive earth quake in the state of Gujarat, specifically in Kutch regions.The 2001 Gujarat earthquake occurred on January 26, 2001, at 08:46 AM, that day being public holiday I was resting in my house at Andheri Mumbai. It was a rented house so the owner of the house just next door came running to me to alert me and see the TV news .. In fact if I remember there were tremors minutely in Mumbai also. I was working at that time in a leading engineering company in its PR dept. And like many other corporate our company had donated Indian rupees Rs.500 million besides employees sending their team to help people. I remember, the time was so unfortunate that while then Prime Minister of India Atal Behari Vajpayee was addressing the nation and while school children in quake region were either rushing to schools or coming back were stuck and killed in the deadly quake then. The quake destroyed around 90% of homes, eight schools, two hospitals and 4 km of road in Bhuj. Thhe epicentre was Bhuj.. With a magnitutude of between 7.6 and 8.1 on the Richter scale, the quake reportedly killed thousands of people, injured over 167,000 and destroyed nearly 400,000 homes. The shock waves spread 700 km. 21 districts were affected and 600,000 people left homeless. Gujarat's commercial capital ahmedabad with a population of 4.6 million, as many as 50 multi-storied buildings collapsed and several hundred people were killed. The quake destroyed 80% of usable food and water supplies in Kutch. I still recall the TV shots and newspaper reports with devastating pictures of buildings, homes collapsed.