‘Earthquake’ is the story of a little boy called Brij whose attempts at finding his little sister buried under the debris after a devastating earthquake for a hundred and sixteen hours turns out to be a miraculous success. The story begins with references to Brij offering tea to strangers in his roadside tea shop in Garhwal.

The boy speaks cheerfully to people waiting for the bus and introduces himself as a seventeen-year-old who had earlier worked in a roadside, dhaba outside Panipat. In the course of his conversation, he also lets the strangers know that Molthi, the village he had belonged to, was ruined in an earthquake four years ago.

It was by sheer chance that Brij was away from Molthi when the earth quaked. He had been to Pauri to buy his school books and had stayed back at his uncle’s place for the night. The earthquake did not last for long. It was for less than five minutes. But its effect was devastating.

Its epicentre was in a valley near Garhwal. Out of the six hundred and seventy villages, six hundred and two villages were destroyed. It brought the centuries old mountains crashing, reduced the villages to rubble and snuffed out hundreds of lives. The landslides, which were in dozens, led to road blocks with huge boulders thrown across the motorable tracks and roads.

After the earthquake, Brij returned to Molthi. He had the dismay of performing the last rites of all his family members, except for his two year old sister Bhuli who was not found by the rescue operators. Everybody concluded that she was eaten up by wild animals.

But when Brij insisted on looking for her among the debris of his house, an army officer with two of his men resumed the rescue work though there was little chance of the child being alive after hundred and sixteen hours. But miraculously Bhuli was alive.

However, Brij never got the chance to thank the army officer. This weighed on his conscience. When he returned to Panipat, he worked in a roadside dhaba outside Panipat. He saved money to open a teashop at Garhwal and to serve tea to tired travellers. In every tired traveller, he saw the face of the army officer. This was Brij’s way of thanking the army officer who had helped him.