I first met Maya Gurung last year, a few days after a massive earthquake struck Nepal. Maya was recovering from the amputation of her left leg at a Kathmandu hospital.
I wrote a story about her  because I wondered how a little girl would fare in Kashi Gaon, the remote and rugged village in Gorkha District, where she lived. It would be hard for her without the use of a leg; her future seemed bleak.
Then a second quake hit Nepal on May 12. And Maya’s life trajectory changed again.
Ahead of the first anniversary of the quake, I returned to Nepal for CNN to find out how Maya was doing. I believe hers is a story of something good happening from something very bad.
I have been corresponding with K.S. Narendran for almost a year now. His wife, Chandrika Sharma, was one of the passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 when it vanished from the skies on March 8, 2014.
He recently shared with me how he has been coping. He spoke  with me by email, phone and Skype from his home in Chennai, India. The story was published today on CNN.com.
I feel honored that he shared so much of himself. I think all of us could learn from his fortitude.
Sunday prayers outside the Notre Dame cathedral, damaged heavily in the earthquake. May 2010
I spoke with this man in the rubble of the cathedral. He said he lost everything, including his wife.
It was wonderful to see children going back o school in Port-au-Prince.
This old woman was displaced from her home in Leogane got lucky to find temporary housing built by Habitat for Humanity. May 2010
This girl worked as a prostitute to make money in a tent city. She was young, frightened and abused.
I spoke with my friend Jean Mariot Cleophat by phone today. It has been five years since I first met him.
He was my guide for much of my reporting journey through Haiti after the massive 2010 earthquake that left Haitians is utter despair. They called in “La catastrophe.”
Reporters from around the world rushed to Haiti then, hungry to tell the story of the disaster. Ordinary people felt moved to make donations, by cell phone even. The world pledged billions of dollars.
Everyone said: Haiti will rise from its ashes and finally succeed in its long struggle to overcome poverty.
Mariot and me in May 2010 in Port-au-Prince.
Everyone said: We will not forget Haiti.
But we did forget Haiti, by and large.
It is the fifth anniversary of the earthquake and the world’s focus is not on Haiti today.
The earth shook for a mere 60 seconds that Tuesday and 220,000 people died.
Millions were left homeless, desperately seeking shelter in camps that grew to become huge tent cities.
In their vulnerable state, Haitians braved killer hurricanes and a cholera outbreak.
There are places in Port-au-Prince now that show no hints of the catastrophe.
The palace has been fixed up and shiny new buildings built. There are new roads, new houses. The markets are do brisk business. But, said Mariot, they belie the truth about Haiti. They belie the plight of ordinary people.
I asked Mariot how his life has been.
“I feel without hope,” he told me.
Mariot is not yet 30. He is educated and speaks English fairly well. Since the last time I saw him in early 2011,he has gotten married and now has a four-year-old daughter.
He’s worked numerous jobs in international companies. He got himself OSHA certified and was working for a construction firm but when the World Bank contract ran out, so did his job. He’s moved to the countryside because it’s cheaper there than Port-au-Prince. I asked him what he was dong for money.
He said he finds temporary jobs here and there; makes $300-400 a pop. It pays for food. But it’s hardly enough.
“There are no jobs here,” he said. “What happened to all the promises of jobs for Haitians?”
That got me thinking about a conversation I had with a friend whose father used to work for a major cruise company. He told me how he had been to Haiti as a boy when tourists flocked to its turquoise waters and white sand beaches. I know there had been efforts to restart tourism in Haiti, a notion that irks those who see it as exploitative. But I wondered how much Haiti might profit from a booming tourism trade.
If we can talk about Cuba opening up to Americans who want to sun themselves in the tropics, then why not Haiti?
I don’t know what happened to all the people I met in Haiti. How did they recover? Were they able to regain a semblance of normalcy?
I think of them this week and pay tribute to their fortitude. And resilience.
Before he hung up, Mariot told me he lives by faith. Like all Haitians, he said, he lives by the grace of God.
My mother and me at the Acropolis in Greece. June 23, 1964.
My mother would have turned 82 today. I would have picked up the phone and called her. 011-91-33-2247-6600.
I would have said: Ma! Happy Birthday. I would have asked her what she was doing to celebrate.
She would have said that my pishi (aunt) was coming over for lunch. Nothing special was planned.
I wold have asked about what else was going on. She would have given me family updates — she kept in touch with everyone. She was the glue. She would have caught me up with gossip about the neighbors in our flat building.
She would have hurried through the conversation to get to the most important part. When will you come to Kolkata?
I would have said: In mid-September, Ma. I will be there soon.
I would have imagined her smile. She would have told me how she couldn’t wait to see me.
I will get on a plane to go home next week but she won’t be there waiting for me.
Happy Birthday, beautiful Ma. I miss you every waking moment.
Anniversary stories are common in journalism. A year ago in Haiti, an earthquake devastated the country…
Anniversaries a great peg to revisit stories.
Number 10 is a big one and I am sure journalists around the country are gearing up to tell all sorts of stories as we approach the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Hard to believe sometimes that it has been that long.
I have been thinking of my own 10th anniversaries this year — of a massive earthquake struck I covered in western India when I suddenly found myself in the midst of intense human misery.
Today is the 10th anniversary of my father’s death. Alzheimer’s turned his brain to mush and rendered his body weak and feeble. In the end, he had massive bed sores eating away the outer layers of flesh.
I knew he was very ill and was rushing to get home to Kolkata. In Amsterdam, during a six-hour layover, I found out he had died.
I sat at an airport bar, drinking glasses of cabernet and wiping away unstoppable tears.
I tried to calm myself with the thought of my father’s pain finally ending; that he had found relief.
I landed in Kolkata and tended right away to his cremation,
Today, I went to work with thoughts of my father’s death. It was one anniversary that went without notice in the CNN newsroom.
Evil Reporter Chick 