Kathmandu’s earthly monuments, damaged by earthquakes, rise again with help of the stars in heaven
- In Kathmandu, restoration work began months after devastating 2015 earthquakes that flattened many of the Nepali capital’s heritage monuments
- Astrologer Keshav Mangal Joshi’s job is to find the most auspicious days to start building, so everything can go as smoothly as possible
At the forefront of the small army of planners, architects, carpenters and other tradesmen engaged in rebuilding Kathmandu – the Nepalese capital laid waste by a mammoth earthquake five years ago – is someone whose prime concern is what’s taking place in the heavens rather than on Earth: astrologer Keshav Mangal Joshi.
The 7.8-magnitude quake that struck the city at noon on April 25, 2015 was followed by a second one the following month, which was almost as powerful. The effects were felt across Nepal, but it was the capital that suffered the worst damage.
Street-mounted cameras captured the surreal seconds when monuments that had stood for centuries shook, convulsed and crumbled into dust. In all, 750 listed heritage monuments were damaged or destroyed, together with thousands of schools and health facilities, and three-quarters of a million homes.
Nine thousand people died; three times as many were injured. The cost of the earthquake is estimated at US$8 billion, though no dollar figure can adequately reflect the destruction to a city that traces its history back over 2,000 years.
“I suppose you could say it was ironic that no astrologer saw the quake coming,” says Joshi, 77, who trained as a mechanical engineer in India before taking up his traditional family profession.
“Astrologers had predicted the biggest earthquake of the 20th century, which did a similar amount of damage in Kathmandu in January 1934, but the 2015 quake was a real bolt from the blue, and a truly terrible one at that. I was in Kathmandu at the time and remember it vividly.”
