Loss of soul and soil

He had just sat down for lunch after tending the garden at his house in Lagan Tole on 25 April 2015 when the ground began to shake violently.  

Gautam Nepal, 56 at the time, realised it was an earthquake. He panicked at the thought of his neighbours' multi-storied buildings toppling on top of his modest one-storey house. He rushed out as the high-rises swayed and groaned.

“We were used to earthquakes, moderate ones are a regular occurrence in Kathmandu, but I had never felt fear like I felt on that day,” recalls Gautam. “My house proved strong, it did not collapse.”

LAGAN TOLE'S TOLL: Lagan Tole photographed by tour guide Neil S Rawlins during his travel to Kathmandu in February 1970.(Photo: Shristi Karki)
Lagan Tole photographed by Neils Gutschow in 1992.
Lagan Tole in 2025.

Other residents of Lagan who also live in traditional low rise houses had the same fear. Tara Nepali, then 48, was doing the washing that Saturday. 

She recalls, “When my house began to shake, I could only think about the bigger buildings falling on top of me. I was sure my house would collapse, but to my surprise, it survived, and so did we.”

Gautam Nepali in front of his one-storey Lagan home, where he had been having lunch just before the earthquake struck 10 years ago.(Photo: Shristi Karki)
Tara Nepali in front of her house in Lagan. She was doing the washing during the earthquake in 2015.(Photo: Shristi Karki)

But Buddha Khadgi, 68, was not so lucky. His was one of the few houses in the neighbourhood to be reduced to rubble. His lifelong collection of photographic prints were buried, and so were the traditional Newari musical instruments passed down through generations of his family that he used to give music lessons. 

“I lost the things that connected me to my roots and my heritage. That was infinitely more heartbreaking than the fact that my house was gone,” says Khadgi, now living in a new cement structure.

Lagan's Maka Galli some decades ago. Photo: SHREE RAM NEPALI(Photo: Shristi Karki)
Lagan's Maka Galli in 2025. The neighbourhood's old Newari houses have been replaced by concrete structures, although the falcha has been rebuilt in traditional style.(Photo: Shristi Karki)

Lagan Tole in Kathmandu's historic heart emerged relatively unscathed from the earthquake in large part because, like in nearby Asan, the buildings are densely packed and lean on each other.

But in the years after the earthquake, urban pressure and fear of future quakes have made families tear down their traditional houses with sloping tile roofs and replace them with concrete structures. 

Glimpses of present-day Lagan.(Photo: Shristi Karki)

Lagan’s longtime residents, especially the elderly whose families have lived here for generations, say that the neighbourhood with its characterless new tall cement boxes is no longer familiar to them.

“We used to say that our houses are not supposed to be taller than temples, the houses of our gods,” says Gautam. “Now, the houses here dwarf the temples and even the chariot of Seto Machindranath.”

The Seto Machindranath procession at Lagan on 10 April 1998, during which the chariot caught fire. Photo: SOCIAL MEDIA(Photo: Shristi Karki)
The Seto Machindranath procession at Lagan earlier this month.(Photo: Shristi Karki)

 The old baha courtyards, falcha resting places, and open spaces where Lagan’s residents used to grow vegetables and gather as a community are nearly all gone.

And the taller the houses get, residents say they feel less anchored to the soil. Lagan has also lost its soul -- the community spirit is eroding as elderly neighbours rarely venture down to meet each other in the evenings.  

“This no longer feels like the tole I grew up in,” says a resident. “We are beginning to lose the relationships we had with each other as a community, and with it, the spirit of Lagan.”