THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The ground of the Jyothi Nilayam School where the four of them used to play was dead still. The numbness turned to tears and heart-rending yells when four ambulances, one after another, turned into the school compound on Tuesday noon. The bodies of Aromal S Nair, Ashwin, Krishna Priya and Kaniha, who had lost their lives when the mini-bus carrying them back home from school had plunged into the Parvathy Puthanar on Monday evening, were brought to the school from Medical College Hospital. The still bodies of the children were brought to their beloved school by relatives and friends. School headmistress Sr Greeta Thattil and class teachers assisted their dearest wards in their last visit to the school. Hundreds of people had turned up to pay homage to the young ones. The bodies were lined up for public homage in a specially-done makeshift platform. The children of the school who had stapled black straps to their shoulders waited in a long queue to bid the last farewell to their friends. Many of the children, including girls who were weeping, were seen carried by their parents. The teachers who had worn a mask of resilience before the arrival of the ambulances turned to each others’ shoulders for support. Even the nuns and the priest of the nearby convent who had tried their best to console the teachers and the students failed in their bid. The most heart-rendering sight occurred when the first standard students, who were the classmates of Kaniha Santhosh, lined up in the queue to see their departed pal. The little children had no sense of the gravity of the situation and had worn a puzzled look on their faces after seeing too much commotion outside. The young children came closer to Kaniha, who was dressed in a white frock and stockings and appeared as if an angel had fallen asleep, and stared at her for sometime without realising that she will never wake from her sleep. In the afternoon, the bodies were taken to Kadinamkulam, where they were kept at the sand-bedded plot owned by the Devaswom Board for public homage. It might be sheer coincidence that the bodies were taken to the same place where the three children, Aromal, Ashwin and Krishna Priya, had merrily participated in the Onam celebrations organised by a local arts club a few weeks earlier. The funerals of the three children were performed by 3 pm. The body of Kaniha has been kept in a mobile mortuary at her house awaiting the arrival of her father from Kuwait. Her funeral would be held at St Joseph’s Church, Santhipuram on Wednesday.
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