There was a 3.5 magnitude earthquake this afternoon , epicentered 5 miles from where I work. My usual reaction in such occurences is to grab my purse and make a run for wide open spaces, out of the way of crashing furniture and collapsing walls. This time I was in a hurry to exit this 40 year old office building with doubtful seismic stability as soon as I could. As I was running down the stairs, I realized I was the only one one trying to save my life. My colleagues just carried on with their work with a few exclamations such as "Did you feel that?", "Was that an earthquake?" etc.
I slowed down. I was in northern California. This is where earthquakes happen a lot. I had been through six earthquakes of different magnitudes in the last six years. This was my seventh and I was alive.
This is "Probash" (Bengali for another land or not your native land). Here earthquakes are normal. I told myself to calm down and take a few deep breaths and gradually the panic waves left me. I slowly walked up the stairs. As I went in to my office and sat down, another panic wave hit - I hope Bontam and Raja are fine. The next few minutes were spent making phones calls and getting reassurances that everything was ok.
At end of the day, I still felt as green as I did when I lived through my first earthquake back in 2001. I was not yet a "probashi" northern Californian.
