Fortune gave to Hitendra Barot with one hand but took away with the other.
Barot survived a fall from his 10th-floor apartment which was devastated by the earthquake that hit the Indian state of Gujarat on Friday. He emerged with only a few scratches and slightly injured feet, but rescuers are still searching for his wife in the rubble of the building in the state capital, Ahmedabad.
"When the earthquake struck, I and my wife were on the balcony," Barot said yesterday as he sat watching mechanical diggers and rescuers sifting through the ruins. "The whole building started shaking and within seconds it was collapsing," he said.
For half-an-hour he lay unconscious under a pile of rubble. When he awoke, he managed to extricate himself from the debris and crawl out.
About 50 residents of the Mansi apartment block are believed to have died when it collapsed. By yesterday afternoon members of the Indian army, paramilitary Rapid Action Force and other rescuers had removed 21 bodies from the ruins.
Among the 24 survivors were a mother and her baby who were recovered on Saturday evening by a Swiss team with sniffer dogs.
"There might be more survivors," said Lieut Col Satya Panwar, who was overseeing operations yesterday. "We have not completely given up hope. Miracles do happen. There are some cavities under the building in which there could still be some survivors," he said.
Others at the scene were not so hopeful. "The chances of anyone else being alive in there are very bleak," said a man wearing a surgical mask.
As he spoke, the body of Sagar, an eight-year-old boy, was carried down from a twostorey pile of rubble and taken to a waiting ambulance.
The Mansi apartment building was a twin high-rise, typical of the many modern blocks which give Ahmedabad a European feel. Some 100 multi-storey buildings were brought down by Friday's earthquake, at 7.9 on the Richter scale, the strongest in India for half a century. Some 700 people are thought to have died in Ahmedabad.
The death toll for the state is estimated at about 15,000.
The destruction in Ahmedabad is not restricted to one area but spread throughout. The city lies about 300 miles from the epicentre of the earthquake, which was near the town of Bhuj.
You can drive down the streets of the state capital for 10 or 15 minutes, weaving among the bustling traffic and sacred cows, seeing little evidence of damage. Then suddenly you come upon a building lying in ruins and surrounded by crowds of onlookers. Some structures lie pitched to one side at improbable angles, surreal imitations of foundering ships on a rough sea.
Recent construction proved no guarantee of safety for the inhabitants of Ahmedabad. Indeed, many of the destroyed buildings were of recent vintage.
The Sacred Flower English Medium School, in which 40 children perished on Friday morning, was built only last year. The four-storey L-shaped complex in Maninagar sank to the ground, crushing the teenage students inside. It was a national holiday but they had turned up for a science class. Most died in the stairwell as they desperately tried to run from the collapsing building.
About 20 children miraculously survived the collapse of the school's thick concrete floors. A few children's shoes and study books are now the only evidence of the life and laughter than once echoed through its corridors.
Yesterday, as rescuers continued their increasingly forlorn search for more survivors, bystanders blamed the builder for the high death toll.
"It was badly built," said Kinnar Patel, a neighbour and civil engineering student who himself pulled four children alive from the ruins on Friday. "It was put up in just four months. Parts of it fell apart while it was being constructed, and people warned that it was unsafe, but the builder continued the work," he said.
Patel pointed out the untouched two-storey villa in a neighbouring street which he said was the builder's home. Its wrought-iron gates had been padlocked and it appeared to be empty.
Nearby, diggers and trucks were also at work at the site of the destroyed Divyalaya apartment block where as many as 80 people are believed to have died.
Only three or four people survived: one was a bridegroom who had returned home to have his beard ritually shaved on the morning of his wedding. His bride-to-be was elsewhere in the city, but his parents and other family members died.
The complex was only 2-1/2 years old. Workers at the site yesterday said they thought about 30 bodies had yet to be recovered.
Hospitals in Ahmedabad are filled with injured survivors. Among them is 12-year-old Prutha Desai who was rescued 30 hours after her four-storey apartment block folded. To reach her, soldiers had to dig a 25ft tunnel though mounds of collapsed concrete.
But the young girl was wedged under a crushed car in the garage area where she had fallen. Fearful of further collapses, doctors amputated her left arm to pull her free.
About 18 people are believed to have died in the collapse of the Sange Marmar complex in Friends Colony, the middle-class suburb where Prutha lived.
It was not until early on Saturday afternoon that rescue teams heard her cries for help deep under hundreds of tons of debris.
One Sange Marmar resident, Jatin Badiyani, had been out playing cricket with his brother at the time the earthquake hit. His wife, two-month-old daughter and his parents were among those who lay dead in the ruins.
Everywhere in the rubble the detritus of ordinary lives was visible: home furnishings, clothes and children's toys. Someone had removed a battered image of the Indian elephant god, Ganesh - the god of good fortune - and placed it on a nearby wall.
Rescuers sifting through the rubble pointed to the suspiciously large quantities of dry sand and mud. The builder of the apartment block would have much to answer for but, this being India, he may never be brought to book.
There has been criticism of the slowness with which the rescue effort swung into action but also widespread praise for the quick response to Gujarat's plight by the Indian army and other rescue teams. Medics and search squads have been flown into the stricken areas by the Indian air force and by countries outside India, including Britain and Switzerland.
Thousands of families were last night again sleeping outdoors in Gujarat. Some were doing so because their homes had been destroyed, others for fear of further tremors.