Having only just been born when it happened, Omkar didn’t remember his parents’ reaction when they heard the news. He had no memory of his sister or brother. But the tragedy was like a thundercloud always hanging over the family. His mother kept their pictures on the wall. She clutched Omkar tighter because of the loss of them. She clutched him so tight, he could barely breathe. It was as if his parents had placed all of themselves in him and in his life’s trajectory, which they tried to control every part of.

After the tragedy happened, they spent five more years in Chandigarh before deciding that they couldn’t take the pain of trying to feel like a family again in the same house that Ajit and Shashi had been raised in. They considered moving to a different house in the same city. But it would have been the same way of life. They wanted a new life altogether. So, when Omkar was seven, they decided to move to America. They chose to move to Los Angeles because of the weather and the dreams they imagined they could make a reality there. Although he had been a market research analyst in India, the only job that Omkar’s father could get in America was in a little convenience store called the Sun Market. He worked hard and saved money until he offered to buy the place from its owner, who wanted to retire. He renamed the place the Super Sun Market. The family had been both working and living there above the store ever since.

Omkar wanted to be a civil engineer in order to design and construct buildings that could withstand any earthquake. This goal was the North Star of his life. The Gujarat earthquake lasted just over two minutes. In those two minutes, the entire course of his family’s lives was changed. It was tainted forever. Three members of his family had been lost. And some people had an even worse fate. Some that were there, who did not die themselves, lost everything and everyone. Omkar couldn’t live with the idea that in a matter of minutes, something like this could happen. He had so many reasons for having this goal, but deep down, part of him felt like if he just figured out how to resolve the issue that had killed them in the first place, the dark cloud over the family might lift.