But his tryst with serving others didn’t end there. As Gurung was admitting the young boy to the emergency, he saw a mother in her early forties carrying a seriously injured infant. The child was bleeding profusely, and the mother was trying to cut her way through the crowd to reach the emergency ward. Sadly, the child died, in the arms of his mother, even before he could see a doctor. This was the moment of epiphany for Gurung. Gurung decided that he would do whatever he could to prevent people from dying for lack of proper medical attention, or suffering from hunger and thirst.

Gurung started out by providing the doctors and the patients in the hospital with clean drinking water. “I noticed that everyone inside the hospital was dehydrated, so I went to Thamel and bought bottles of drinking water for all of them,” says Gurung. After that, he distributed noodles to everyone who was inside the hospital, for which he travelled all the way to Chabahil, since all the shops in the locality were closed.

   Slowly, words about Gurung’s service started spreading in the hospital, and people started coming out to help him with whatever they could.

“I was just a guy who was taking shelter at the Trauma Center with my family. But there I saw Sudan dai, distributing noodles and water to everyone around. Seeing his selfless service I too joined him. Gradually, my mother too started helping him distribute food and water to the needy,” says Bibek Man Singh, a resident of Mahaboudha.

“I had not known him before, but his tireless work and selfless service inspired me to lend a hand. That’s how we came up with the idea of starting I 2 We, a volunteer organisation working for the earthquake victims,” Singh adds.

Since then, the organisation has swelled to more than 1,000 volunteers.

 Along with the rising number of volunteers came the necessity of coordinating and managing them properly.

So Gurung decided to divide them into different groups and provide them with various tasks like taking patients to the different rooms in the hospital for various checkups, arranging blood and medicine for them, providing the staff and patients with food and water,  managing hospital waste and taking care of patients’ hygiene.  

“I 2 We’s aim is to create an environment where doctors and nurses can serve patients and carry out their responsibilities without worrying about anything else. We ensure that patients get all the help they require and don’t suffer from the lack of food, medicine, blood and proper treatment,” says Gurung.

Even doctors and nurses at the hospital accept that I 2 We’s involvement has made the hospital’s service better and more efficient. “These volunteers have helped us a lot. They have changed the image of the hospital and challenged the notion that government hospitals are inefficient and unsanitary places,” says Dr Dailendra Maharjan.   

   Nearly three weeks after the Gorkha quake, the situation in the hospital has stabilised.

But Gurung does not want to ease up on his efforts. The man who established an ad hoc body to help the earthquake victims after seeing a hapless child die on his mother’s has already gone to more than 15 earthquake-affected districts with his teams, to distribute relief material and run free health camps, and he plans to reach out to more people.  

Now, along with his volunteers, Gurung wants to get involved in reconstruction and rehabilitation works that have started in the various quake-affected areas.

“I had a desire to help others since my childhood. We will increase the number of volunteers in our organisation and set out to build earthquake-resistant homes in various parts of the country,” says Gurung.

With inputs from Biswash Adhikari