At a temporary shelter for the people of Langtang village which was almost completely wiped out by the April earthquake reside 38-year-old Lakpa Tamang and her eight year-old daughter Lachhi, who studied in Kathmandu.
For Lakpa, her husband who worked in a cheese factory in the village died before her very eyes, while her son Dukkey Tamang, the “apple of her eye”, was carried away by the wind of an avalanche that killed him as he hit a stone. One of the most beautiful trekking destinations near Kathmandu, a massive glacier cracked following the earthquake creating an avalanche that buried Langtang village killing over 200 people, with hundreds more unaccounted for.
While little Lachhi nurses a cornea infection back in the camp, what she keeps asking her heart-wrung mother is if her dad and brother are coming back soon.
This is the story of one family facing the brutal repercussions of an earth quake that hit not once but twice, along with innumerable aftershocks.
Witnessed and recounted by Saagar Chhetri, a professional photographer in Nepal, he is just one among the many contributors to Nepal Photo Project(NPP), a platform that is working towards aggregating critical and accurate information about the earthquake and its aftermath.
Initiated by Sumit Dayal, a photojournalist who grew up in Kathmandu, and now resides in India, the project is a spin-off of a feed called the India Photo Project that acts like an informal collective showcasing contemporary photography out of India. The NPP, on the other hand, is more an aggregated stream of images and information coming out of Nepal covering the aftermath of the earthquake which they considered the best way to collectively put out information from people that they could trust on the ground, all under one banner
According to Tara Bedi, the editor of NPP, the parameter for what they post online is kept simple. “… it should communicate something purposeful or meaningful - be it the damage/devastation, links to reliable fundraising campaigns, photographs of missing people so they can be circulated as widely as possible, coverage of rescue/relief operations, citizen volunteer initiatives, volunteer opportunities, links to resources like quakemap.org that is essentially a crisis response website, other relevant articles/images.
A lot of information has been carried on media about the Nepal earthquake aftermath. According to Bedi, the vibe of NPP is different, as it allows its photographers the freedom to “express in a more 'real' and humane way and I think people connect to that,” she says, in an email interview.
Though there is a community of photographers who contribute to NPP, what’s most interesting about the project is that its list of contributors is dynamic. “it keeps growing as and when we discover new, relevant posts," she says.
While pictures of death and destruction found major presence, so did stories of hope. A few days after the first earthquake, even as the country withstood repeated aftershocks, a one photographer shared a picture of his childhood friend getting married. “it brought some much needed mental relief. Though it's a long road to recovery, life is slowly trying to move back to normalcy,” wrote Sachindra Rajbansi, a few days ahead of the second earthquake that hit them again.
“We realised that the big one had come. Life changed over night. Coping with loss became difficult as loss was felt at multiple levels – cities were destroyed, people were dead and many had no homes to get back to. Parks filled up with tents and there were no shops to go and buy foodstuffs.
Everyone says that relief came fast, but every moment on the ground seemed so long,” he says about his experience after the quake.
Photo by Sachindra Rajbansi
From the kind of responses NPP has received by relatives and friends of those living in Nepal, it has served an immense help for those reaching out to their loved ones, or those trying to witness and understand what the nation is hoping to do - rebuild their homes, brick by brick.
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