North Bihar's iconic Rameshwar Vilas Palace was once feted in London's prestigious journals for its architectural grandeur and royal gardens but the massive January 15, 1934 earthquake reduced the majestic building to an inglorious pile of bricks.
On this day 82 years ago, the earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter Scale ripped through north Bihar and Nepal, leaving a massive trail of destruction and thousands of casualties on both sides of the Himalayas.
"It (Rameshwar Vilas Palace) fell like a pack of cards. Built in 1886, its glory was unparalleled, attracting glowing praises in journals like the Illustrated London Weekly. But, today its situation is worse than the rubble it was piled into over 80 years ago, a mere skeletal remain of its past grandeur," said Kumud Singh, a native of Darbhanga district.
Built in the late 19th century by the Darbhanga Raj, an influential zamindari family of north Bihar's Tirhut region, in Rajnagar town of Madhubani (earlier part of Darbhanga district), the palace, also known as Navlakha with its ornate artwork and majestic design, used to beckon heritage lovers and tourists from far and wide.
Kumud, who belongs to the Darbhanga Raj family, feels hurt less by the havoc the nature wreaked on that fateful day but more by the "apathy of the government and the people of the region".
"Today marks a very important day in the history of Mithila region. While we pray for those countless lives lost in the calamity, it is heartening to remember that from its very ruins, a planned Darbhanga city was born. But, we have allowed our city to go to seed," she said.
The 1934 quake, dubbed officially the Great Bihar-Nepal Earthquake, and epicentred south of Mt Everest brought untold misery in its wake on both sides. In Bihar, districts after districts from Munger to Muzaffarpur and Darbhangha to Purnea were flattened, railway lines twisted cutting of lines of communication.
In Darbhanga town, iconic Laxmi Vilas Palace or Anand Bagh Palace (now Kameshawar Singh Darbhanga Sanskrit University) and Nargouna Palace (now L N Mithila University) were badly damaged and were restored after the quake. Many landmarks in Patna and Calcutta were also damaged.
For Nepal, the 1934 quake is considered its worst tragedy ever, which not only claimed nearly 12,000 lives but also destroyed thousands of buildings and severely damaged the country's architectural fabric, including the three famous Darbar Squares and the iconic Dharhara Tower.
The killer April 2015 quake (7.9 magnitude), which claimed over 8,000 lives in that country and several hundreds dead in India, also served as a chilling reminder of that tragedy, known in Nepal as the '90 saal ka bhukamapa (the 90's quake)', referring to the Bikram Samwat equivalent of the year (1934 AD equals 1990 BS), as per the calendar followed in the Himalayan nation.
Parsuram Upadhyay, 90, who survived both the deadly
temblors, considers the 1934 earthquake "scarier".
"I feel lucky to have survived not just one but two killer quakes. But the one that hit us in 1934 was scarier. Jets of water sprouted from the ground, and the earth shook like it was possessed by some demon," Upadhyay told
