“Where were you when the earthquake happened?” I was asked recently.

It had been a while. There was a time when the question invariably came up, in every conversation.

And not just in the months following April 25, 2015. For years. If it was someone you hadn’t seen in a while, somehow it always came around to that.

**

This time, like I said, it had been a while.

Can you believe it’s been nine years?

Impossible. And yet, here we are.

I knew that the tremors had lost their hold on me when I agreed to take this flat three years ago, and only remembered, late that night in bed, that I’d said I’d never live this high, even though it’s only five floors. Or four, depending on how you count it. I’ve written about that.

**

So many stories shared; people who left because of the earthquake, others who, seemingly, stayed because it happened. Those who happened to fly out the day before, or that very morning. I’ve also never forgotten a young photographer from Patan that I once worked with. He’d been on a job somewhere in the Annapurna region; it wasn’t as strong there. He spoke of the disconnect he felt at not being in his city and with his community during such an historic event. Strange as it may sound to some, he wished he’d been here, been a part of it.

It didn’t sound that strange to me.

**

And where was I? It was minutes before noon; at one I was supposed to meet a friend at the annual international tattoo convention, the most recent of which I popped in on earlier this month. It was a lazy Saturday and I’d just hung some laundry on the roof of the one-story little house I lived in then and was standing in my front door, relaxed, contemplating my next move, when I tripped the two steps to the small, concrete front area. It took me a few seconds to realize I hadn’t tripped, the world had moved.

Minutes later and I’d have been in the shower, as a friend of mine was. He ran out of his hotel into the rapidly filling streets of Thamel, where a stranger handed him something to wrap himself in.

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