My newsletter commentaries of life in rural India frequently contain tragic stories and each year we have to advise sponsors of some catastrophes that happen to children. This year, however, Val, our Sponsorship Secretary, has had to write an unusual amount of letters advising sponsors of tragedies that have befallen their current or past sponsored children. We are just in May and we have had six deaths. These are all past students, so it is difficult for us to find out the exact details, but it is equally distressing for us. The photos used are school photos as we don't have any recent ones.
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Shivam
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Shivam, a past student of our Hasra School, died on the 10 March retrieving a ball from a roof which was near a high voltage power cable.
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Kanaklata
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Kanaklata, also a student at our Hasra School and passed out in 2011, died on the 20 March of what sounds like cancer, but she seems to have only been ill for a few weeks.
Laxman, another past student of Hasra School who passed out in 2006, we are told died of jaundice on the 15 April.
Ram Karan, is a teacher in Hasra School. His son, Dharmendra, died in the night of 14-15 May. He had studied up to Grade 8 in our school. Nobody knows the actual reason of his death as, while sleeping, he suddenly woke up and complained of a bad feeling in his throat and died a short time later. The family guessed that he might have been bitten by some poisonous creature, but there were no visible signs on his body. However, his body was yellow and his face was black after death.
We have also been advised of a further double tragedy. This involved a past student of our Mujehra School, Ghanshyam, who was
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Ghanshyam
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accompanying his mother and aunts to the banks of the Ganges to bathe in the holy waters. He noticed his cousin was in some difficulties in the river. The ladies cast their saris into the water to try and help but he was too far out. Ghanshyam jumped into the river to save him but the fast flow took him, yet his cousin survived.
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| Munshi |
Following this, Munshi, a brother of the saved boy and a classmate of Ghanshyam, found it hard to cope with the death of Ghanshyam, who had tried to save his brother. He was distraught by the event and could not eat. On the 8 April he tragically hanged himself.
