It’s a story I often hear at my home. A story about a time nearly eight years before I was born, and yet it seems to be such an integral part of my life. My father was working at a textile company in Ahmedabad and my elder sibling was about three months old. They lived adjacent to the boundary wall of a reputed school where the Republic Day celebrations were on. Soon after the unfurling of the national flag on the morning of January 26th, nature unleashed its wrath on the people of Gujarat as the earth shook with a strong intensity deep into the heart of the land. The district of Bhuj was torn to smithereens and, 330 kilometers away in Ahmedabad, as the multistoried apartment swayed, my family ran out of the building, trying to escape safely to the streets.

For the next few weeks, as more aftershocks were experienced and disaster engulfed the region, news poured in of how many lost their homes, lives, and livelihoods. Yet the spirit of the people in the community was never shattered or destroyed. In Ahmedabad, people who had homes on the ground floors opened their doors to anyone and everyone, and also opened their hearts by providing blankets, food, medicines, and other essentials like baby clothes to help those who were left stranded and in distress. Men and women formed community kitchens to feed the homeless and help build back normalcy to life. Poor vegetable or milk vendors never worried about their earnings or profits and would leave cartfuls of vegetables and fruits at these community kitchens. Highways became homes for many like my own family, who shuddered at the idea of walking into their homes after the earthquake. Their house had a huge gaping crack in the wall and all the appliances and furniture were thrown to the floor from the powerful earthquake.

This is a glimpse into the resilience of my community and its people. Did anybody care about differences in religion, caste, or faith? No, there was just one concern: picking up the pieces of people’s lives that were broken bit by bit, rebuilding and recreating the glory of the cities and saving as many as possible. With a toddler in her arms, my mother never had to worry about how the family would manage in this crisis, because she had the support of so many people who became her parents, sisters, brothers. In those few days, she doesn’t even remember who took her in for those two weeks and who fed her and her child!

In a crisis, it is the resilience of humanity and the indomitable spirit that is inherent in each one of us, that helps us rise, together, as a community for each other.