Nepal searches the mud as the missing outnumber the confirmed dead

Today's headline is no longer about the wave — it is about the ledger. The confirmed dead are counted; the missing are not, and the gap between those numbers is where grief lives. Rescuers work in mud while finance ministers work in billions, because both are trying to answer the same question: how much was actually lost? Qoheleth called this the vanity of counting — the same event reaches the wise and the foolish alike, and no spreadsheet captures who is still inside a tunnel. The useful reading is not the death toll on day four. It is the list that has no names yet.