A Venezuelan mother's story of loss, hope and a
helping hand from India
It was a warm, peaceful evening in
Venezuela. The last light of the setting sun filtered through the windows,
bathing the little living room in gold. Inside, everything felt wonderfully
ordinary.
My husband, Carlos, had just returned home
from work. He looked tired, but the moment he saw the children, a smile
appeared on his face. Our daughter, Sofia, sat nearby with her little book,
quietly turning the pages. Our younger son, Mateo, was running around the room
with the restless energy that seems to belong only to a seven-year-old. My
mother watched him, smiling each time he passed her.
I was in the kitchen preparing dinner,
listening to Carlos's voice mingle with the children's laughter.
“Maria, is dinner ready?” Carlos called
from the living room.
I smiled. “Almost,” I called back.
For a few precious minutes, nothing in the
world seemed wrong. There was no fear. No warning. Just a family together at
the end of an ordinary day.
I remember looking at them and thinking how
fortunate I was. My husband. My daughter. My little Mateo. My mother.
My
entire world, sitting together under one roof.
I did not know then that, within minutes,
that roof would become a mountain of rubble—and that the same hands that had
prepared dinner for my family would soon be digging desperately through broken
stone, searching for my children.
Because sometimes, life gives you no
warning before changing forever.
The evening changed in seconds. On June 24,
2026, two powerful earthquakes struck northern Venezuela. The tremors,
measuring 7.2 and 7.5 in magnitude, were among the strongest to hit the country
in more than a century. The first struck shortly after 6 p.m. local time,
followed less than a minute later by the stronger quake.
But at that moment, I knew nothing about
magnitudes or seismic records. I knew only that the world beneath our feet had
suddenly become uncertain.
The first movement felt almost unreal. Then
the walls began to shake. The windows rattled violently. Objects fell from the
shelves. The floor seemed to move beneath us.
“Carlos!” I screamed.
He jumped to his feet. Sofia dropped her
book. Mateo stopped running. For one terrible moment, all five of us looked at
one another.
Then came the sound—a deep, thunderous roar
that seemed to rise from beneath the earth itself.
Part of the ceiling collapsed. A wall
cracked. Then another. Dust filled the room. Someone screamed. I do not even
know whether it was me.
Everything became darkness, noise and
falling stone. I fell to the ground. When I opened my eyes, I could barely see
through the dust.
“Sofia!”
No answer.
“Mateo!”
Nothing.
My heart seemed to stop. I began pulling
away the rubble with my bare hands. One stone. Then another. Then another. My
fingers were cut and blood covered my hands, but I felt no pain.
A mother does not think about her own
wounds when her children are trapped beneath the ruins. She digs. She searches.
She refuses to stop.
“Mateo!”
My voice broke.
“Mama is
here!”
Then, from somewhere beneath the rubble,
came the faintest sound. A whisper.
“Mama...”
That single word gave me the strength to
continue. I dug again. Faster. Harder. With everything I had.
I did not know whether I would succeed. I
did not know whether my children were safe. I knew only that they were
somewhere beneath me.
And I had to reach them.
The hours that followed were filled with
uncertainty. Across northern Venezuela, families searched through damaged
buildings. The injured needed medical attention. Communities needed food,
medicines, shelter and, above all, hope.
As the scale of the disaster became clear,
international assistance began moving towards Venezuela. Among the countries
responding was India.
On June 25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi
expressed deep sorrow over the devastation in Venezuela, conveyed condolences
to the families who had lost loved ones, and said that India stood ready to
extend all possible assistance.
The following day, India moved from words
to action.
On June 26, 2026, India launched Operation
Amistad, a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mission for
earthquake-hit Venezuela.
Amistad. A Spanish word meaning Friendship.
Two Indian Air Force C-17 Globemaster III
aircraft departed for Venezuela carrying humanitarian aid, medical supplies and
a specialised rescue contingent.
The mission ultimately carried 66 tonnes of
humanitarian assistance, including more than 35 tonnes of relief supplies,
medicines and medical equipment, an Indian Army field hospital and two BHISHM
Cubes—mobile medical units designed to provide emergency care. The
field-hospital contingent included 41 members.
Thousands of kilometres separated India
from Venezuela. But in that moment, distance seemed far less important than the
simple act of reaching out. Help was
coming.
I remember seeing people arrive from a
country I had never visited. They did not know our families. They did not know
our stories. They did not know our names. Yet they had come.
Indian doctors. Indian medical personnel.
People carrying medicines and medical equipment. People who had left their own
homes to stand beside strangers in ours.
I looked at them and wondered—Why?
Why would people travel thousands of
kilometres to help those they had never met?
Then I understood. Perhaps they had not
come because they knew us. Perhaps they had come because they knew what it
meant to suffer. And perhaps that was enough.
The Indian Army field hospital began
providing medical assistance to people affected by the disaster. The team
worked around the clock, bringing emergency healthcare to a system already
under immense pressure.
For me, however, India was no longer simply
a country on a map. India had become—A
helping hand.
One evening, as I watched the medical teams
at work, I asked my mother, “Why did they come all the way from India?”
She looked at me for a long moment. Her
eyes were tired, but there was something peaceful in them.
Then she said quietly, “Perhaps, for them,
humanity has no borders.”
I did not fully understand the words at
first. Then I remembered something I had heard about India.
Vasudhaiva
Kutumbakam.
The whole world is one family.
That day, those words stopped being
something I had merely heard. They became real.
We were in Venezuela. They had come from
India. Our languages were different. Our cultures were different. Thousands of
kilometres separated our homes.
But when one human being reaches out to
another in a moment of suffering—distance
disappears.
Today, when I look at Sofia and Mateo, I
still remember that evening. Carlos coming home. My mother's smile. Mateo
running through the room. Sofia turning the pages of her book. The golden light
through the window.
And then—the earthquake. The darkness. The
rubble. The fear.
And, after all of it, hope.
I tell my children now: “Remember this day.
There are many countries in this world. There are many languages. There are
many cultures. But there is only one Earth beneath our feet. And wherever you
go, never forget that the person standing before you is a human being before
anything else.”
Because tomorrow, it may be someone else
who needs our hand. And one day, it may be ours.
India's strength is not measured only by
its technology, its economy or the strength of its armed forces. There is
another kind of strength. A quieter one. It appears when someone is suffering.
India has long presented itself as a
peace-loving nation, with dialogue, cooperation and humanity at the heart of
its international outlook.
But peace does not mean simply standing
still and watching. Sometimes, peace means walking towards another person's
pain. Sometimes, it means treating the wounded. Sometimes, it means carrying
medicines across oceans. Sometimes, it means saying to a frightened stranger:
“Do not be afraid. We are with you.”
That, to me, was the meaning of Operation
Amistad.
Not merely assistance. Not merely medicine.
Not merely relief.
But—friendship
in action.
Venezuela's Acting President Delcy
Rodríguez later thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India for the timely
assistance, support and solidarity extended following the earthquakes.
When I heard those words, I thought of my
children. I thought of that evening. And I thought of the people who had
travelled from so far away to stand beside us.
If someone asks me today, “What did India
give you?”
I could say—Medicine. Medical care. Relief
supplies.
But those are only things.
What India gave us was something far harder
to measure.
India
gave us the feeling that we were not alone.
The Earth may be enormous. But humanity can
be greater.
Continents may be separated. But compassion
should never be.
Countries may have borders. But kindness
should have none.
When the Earth trembled in Venezuela, India
was thousands of kilometres away.
And yet India was with us.
Perhaps that is what the ancient Indian
thought means: Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
One Earth. One Humanity. One Family.
And if I could send one message across
those thousands of kilometres, from my little home in Venezuela to the people
of India, it would be very simple:
Thank
you, India.
(In the
voice of a fictional Venezuelan mother)
- रानमोती / Ranmoti
