News relating to Shirdi Sai Baba

[Guest guest]

Source : http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=111758

 

 

HEROES & HEROES

Back to school

The wounds still hurt at night. But in a one-room home at Dadar, a 10-year-old

survivor of a three-week coma cheerfully learns to erase scars of a cruel

hit-and-run accident.

Abhishek Sharan

Mumbai, December 26:

 

>From Monday, I will go to school and meet all my friends. I will have a lot of

homework‘‘SONA, don’t run to the middle of the road. Sona,

don’t run.’’ But Aishwarya Pawar (10)—Sona to family

and doting neighbours—runs, with no sign of having heard worried grandma

Suman (60).

Dressed in a shiny frock and ear-rings, her hair in a pony-tail, Aishwarya is a

bundle of energy in her one-room home at Gautam Nagar in Dadar. From Monday,

Aishwarya will resume school, attending Std V at a civic school in nearby

Naigaon. But her running around has her family worried. They fear losing her,

they almost did. The Pawar family lives with memories of three weeks of

sleepless vigil as Aishwarya slept, in a coma, her hands balled into fists. Hit

by a speeding Maruti Zen that jumped a red light on September 17, Aishwarya

suffered severe head and kidney injuries. At the paediatric surgery intensive

care unit of King Edward Memorial Hospital in Parel, doctors declared her

‘‘critical.’’ Her head still aches every night. The

dark circles under her eyes won’t go away quickly. When Newsline reported

a series on the brave child, her struggle for life was joined by Mumbaiites,

including Shiv Sena leader Raj Thackeray’s wife Sharmila and Congress

leader Digvijay Singh. They supported her father Siddharth—a temporary

civic conservancy worker then, jobless now—with letters, prayers, and

money. On October 8, Aishwarya woke up. ‘‘Papa, why is the volume

so high?’’ Aishwarya had whispered. She was listening to devotional

songs dedicated to Saibaba, gifted by well-wisher Shantilal Panchal (65). At

home now, Aishwarya is slowly returning to her affectionate and inquisitive

self, playing carrom and reciting poems. She darts questions at a visitor,

demands chocolate and admonishes against smoking. But perhaps due to her hand

injuries, she still hesitates to write. Producer Vikas Kapoor has shot a

30-minute episode on her recovery, inspired by the Newsline series. Aishwarya

and Panchal went to a Mankhurd studio for the shoot. The episode, part of a

Shirdi Ke Saibaba serial, was aired at 9 am on December 26 on Zee. The producer

rewarded Aishwarya with Rs 1,000. abhisheksharan (AT) expressindia (DOT) com