uni Ram waits for rescuers to recover his son's body from under the debris of a collapsed hotel building in Gongabu, Kathmandu. Photo by Om Astha Rai Puni Ram waits for rescuers to recover his son’s body from under the debris of a collapsed hotel building in Gongabu, Kathmandu. Photo by Om Astha Rai “I thought my son was already in Qatar,” he says. “And I was hoping he would call me after beginning work there.” But Resham’s flight was cancelled and the recruiting agency kept him at a hotel in a narrow alley near Gongabu bus park in Kathmandu. Resham had not told his family about his flight being cancelled and Puni Ram had already started to dream about a better future.
When the earthquake struck, the five-storey Palpa-Butwal Guest House where Resham was staying, went down. Puni Ram did not get a call from his son even after the earthquake, and thought that was odd. He asked the manpower agency about his son. Three days after the earthquake, Puni Ram found out that his son had not reached Qatar and was, instead, staying at a hotel in Gongabu. He travelled 12 hours by bus and came to Kathmandu, along with his wife, Khima, on Thursday morning. They booked a small room in one of the few hotels that had not collapsed but had cracks from the earthquake.
