I was deeply absorbed in a spy film on television, seated on a hard plastic chair without a cushion, when I felt a sudden movement beneath me. At first, I thought my head was reeling. But when the chair shifted again, it struck me—the tremor was not in me, but in the earth itself. An earthquake.
In Chandigarh
The sensation carried me back half a century, perhaps more, to a Sunday afternoon in Chandigarh. I was playing carrom with friends, carefully studying the angle at which the striker would send the coins into the pocket. Suddenly, the board began to shake. Irritated, I shouted, “Don’t shake!” My friend retorted, “I am not.” At that moment, my father’s voice rang out: “It’s an earthquake!”
Panic followed. My friends rushed to the stairs, hurrying down several flights. That day, the quake was unsettling, but what I felt today was different. The floor moved like a wave—a sine wave, rolling beneath me.
SIMILARITY FOUND
It reminded me of my childhood by the river Hooghly. When a large ship passed, waves would rise and fall in rhythmic succession—one strong, followed by a gentler one, then another, and another. I used to float on the surface, my body rising and dipping with the rhythm, delighting in the dance of the water. Today, the earth itself seemed to mimic that motion.
I switched to a Bengali news channel, where chaos unfolded on the screen: ceiling fans swaying, people rushing into the streets, traffic halted, passersby bewildered, asking, “What happened?”—yet no one had an answer.
This version keeps your personal voice but smooths the flow, heightens the imagery, and balances memory with reflection. It reads like a short essay or memoir piece, something you could share in a blog or anthology.
Would you like me to refine it further into a literary-style essay (more poetic, metaphor-driven) or a journalistic-style piece (clearer, factual, with scientific context)?