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She lost her son in blast, future uncertain

Sushanta Talukdar

Injured 11-month-old daughter has to undergo critical brain surgery

— PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

TRAGIC TALE: Munni Begum, a vegetable vendor who was injured in the blast on New Year’s Day, breaks down as she tells her relative on the phone about her son Sahil’s death. Her 11-month-old daughter Sunaina, with a splinter injury in the head, looks at her from her aunt’s lap, at the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit of the Guwahati Medical College and Hospital on Saturday.

Guwahati: Munni Begum (35) was breast feeding her 11-month-old daughter Sunaina Khatoon at her vegetable stall in the makeshift market at Bhutnath here and was enjoying watching her eight-year-old son Sahil eat cake on New Year Day, when she heard a deafening sound and suddenly there was fire all around. A powerful blast killed Sahil while his sister fainted in his mother’s lap.

Thursday’s serial blast in three localities in the city killed five including Sahil and left 62 injured.

“Sahil loves to eat cakes. So I gave him Rs. 3. He was very happy and rushed to the bakery van. Sahil was merrily eating the piece of cake. Suddenly there was a deafening sound and fire. And my lovely little Sahil died right before my eyes…,” the woman said, her voice choked.

That was not the end of Munni’s tragic tale. Sunaina will now have to undergo a critical brain surgery. A ball bearing used as splinter in the cycle bomb pierced through the child’s skull. On Saturday, Munni, who herself suffered splinter injuries in the left arm, was shifted from a ward to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit of the Guwahati Medical College and Hospital to breastfeed her daughter.

Senior paediatric surgeon Rajiv Rai Baruah told The Hindu that the condition of the child was stable and she had been referred to the Neuro Surgery Department for surgical intervention to remove the ball bearing from the brain. Munni’s sister Ayesha Begum, a mother of three, is also playing mother to Sunaina at the ICU.

To the left of Sunaina’s bed, 30-year-old Sonabi Khatoon was bottlefeeding her four-month-old child Fijnur Ali, when her four-year-old Sonawala came down from his bed in the ICU to be with his mother and little brother. Ali’s right eye was swollen with a ball bearing lodged in the eye bone cavity, while another splinter was lodged in the shoulder.

Sonawala, who sustained multiple injuries, was carrying six splinters in his little frame.

On the right was eight-year-old Raj Kumar Choudhury, who was recuperating from splinter injuries sustained in the right arm, right thigh and right kneejoint in the third blast at Bhangagarh.

Munni faces an uncertain future. She is oblivious of the hard reality that if and when she comes out of the hospital her precious little space at the market will no longer be there for her to make a new beginning. For, Municipal authorities evicted the market that was blown off and removed the stalls there.

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