Boarding buses, planes and trains, Nepalese are leaving India for their homeland following the country’s devastating earthquake, desperate to help relatives stuck in the horror of the disaster zone.
Carrying food, blankets and medicine, India’s anxious Nepalese diaspora is hopeful of crossing the border and rescuing parents and siblings or at least bringing much-needed supplies to badly hit villages.
“My in-laws, cousins and other relatives are suffering,” businessman Ram Madhav yesterday said as he prepared to board a bus to Kathmandu at the international terminal in New Delhi.
Photo: AFP
“I want to help them in whatever way I can,” the 42-year-old said as he carried several bags loaded with aid and a bucket full of clothes.
India is home to the largest diaspora of Nepalese, up to 3 million, many of whom work as maids, drivers and construction workers, sending home each month part of their often low pay to help their extended families.
“A lot of Nepalis want to go back home and help their fellow countrymen. We have been flooded with such requests,” said Krishna Prasad Dhakal, deputy chief of mission at Nepal’s embassy in Delhi.
With demand so high, the Indian government has agreed to the embassy’s request to put on extra trains running to the border that it shares with its neighbor, Dhakal said.
Nepalese said they are not prepared to wait for aid agencies to help their families and are skeptical its government could cope with the scale of the quake.
“I am carrying bananas, dried fruits and cookies, it’s not much but it’s enough for 50 people to survive one day,” D.R. Sharma said at the bus station, hauling his bags.
“God has given me an opportunity to serve my fellow people and I don’t want to let it go to waste,” the 52-year-old salon manager said.
Nanny Sukamaya Tamang, whose parents and brothers are stranded in one of the worst-hit districts, said families there had been left to fend for themselves, with no government help reaching them so far.
Tamang’s family is stranded in Sindulpalchowk, about 100km from the epicenter of the quake, where homes and roads have been destroyed.
“There are a cluster of nine villages and they have been all flattened out,” said Tamang, who managed to speak to her brother over the telephone at their village.
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