Skip to main content
Friday, November 13, 2026Nov 13
Subscribe
All Sections
Search
More

Nepal’s wrenching choices: ‘I feel like I could die anytime’

In this May 2, 2015 photo, Nepalese Rajendra Shrestha, 32, stands next to a damaged building near where he now lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. Shrestha and six members of his family now sleep in a one-room shack in the shadow of where they once lived, an 82-year-old brick building that the quake battered into near-collapse. The family feels it is not safe here but stays because they need to protect their cosmetics shop and their possessions. (AP Photo/Foster Klug)
In this May 2, 2015 photo, Nepalese Rajendra Shrestha, 32, stands next to a damaged building near where he now lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. Shrestha and six members of his family now sleep in a one-room shack in the shadow of where they once lived, an 82-year-old brick building that the quake battered into near-collapse. The family feels it is not safe here but stays because they need to protect their cosmetics shop and their possessions. (AP Photo/Foster Klug) In this May 2, 2015 photo, Nepalese Rajendra Shrestha, 32, stands next to a damaged building near where he now lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. Shrestha and six members of his family now sleep in a one-room shack in the shadow of where they once lived, an 82-year-old brick building that the quake battered into near-collapse. The family feels it is not safe here but stays because they need to protect their cosmetics shop and their possessions. (AP Photo/Foster Klug)

By Associated Press 5 min read

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) – Four days after the earthquake ripped apart the supporting wall attaching her ancient brick house to the tilting seven-story building next door, Parbati Gautam moved back in.

As the aftershocks keep coming, she can’t stop thinking about the wretched state of the four-story structure where she and her husband operate a narrow, soot-streaked bakery on the first floor – and the closet-sized room behind that where they sleep with their two little girls.

The building was so rattled by the huge April 25 quake that fist-sized cracks spread like webs across the walls and ceilings, connecting in places like small river deltas seen from the air. And then there’s the giant peach-colored building that looms unsteadily over her home and workplace.

“I feel like could die anytime. But I have to work, and I have no other place to go,” she says as her husband cooks small pastries behind her on a gas stove. Before moving back, they slept under the open skies, without a tent or tarp, until her fear that thieves would steal her baking equipment, and the need to make money, drove them back home. “I worry about the children, but what other choice do we have?”

___