THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Thankamony still shivers when narrating what had happened on the fateful day. The 52-year-old housewife from Channankara was re-entering her home after collecting flowers from the front yard when she heard children screaming. Rushing outside on to the road, a shocked Thankamony saw children thrashing around in the nearby river. Two men were plucking children trapped inside an overturned bus and placing them inside a canoe tied nearby. But the canoe capsized with the weight and the children were splashing around. Several of them were clinging on to an overhanging acacia branch. Planting one foot firmly in the river, Thankamony grabbed them, and, one at a time, dragged them to the bank. In this manner, she saved almost six girls from getting drowned. She then collected the bags of the children and piled them at the back of her house. After going through them, she discovered that the bags of the four children who died were in her possession. Later, when the rescue operations were over, five students came and collected their bags. Thankamony still maintains that she can feel the odour of the children’s bodies emanating from the shoulder straps. Thankamony, in fact, had seen the bus passing her home when she went out to pluck the flowers. The tragedy occurred when the bus was returning. ‘’When I saw it pass, it was moving at normal speed,’’ she says. When asked whether she would keep the bags if no one turned up to claim them, she became silent, like the river that flowed in front of her home towards the Kadinamkulam lake.
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