Shops begin to open as life limps back to normalcy in Kathmandu

Kathmandu: Life was slowly limping back to normal in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu where shops began reopening eight days after a deadly earthquake. At Kathmandu’s Durbar Square, home to a clutch of curio and clothing shops, bulldozers were still clearing up the rubble from last Saturday’s earthquake that has so far claimed more than 7,000 lives and left over 14,000 injured. Sunil Shreshtha, a clothes seller, said every single day without business meant mounting losses. For some like handicrafts seller Panch Kumar Chhettri, business as usual is likely to take months. However, customers were relieved that shops were re-opening. Meanwhile, a 90-year-old elderly man recalled his horrific earthquake experience that struck Nepal when he was nine years old in 1934 and how similar that was from the present quake. Inder Bahadur was nine years old when he felt the earth tremble for the first time in year 1934. Bahadur works as a priest in a temple located in the worst hit Lalitpur district. Bahadur said that he never expected that destructive tremors would ruin the Himalayan nation again.