In the tragedy-stricken villages of Mundakkai and Chooralmala, the teachers of Government LP school, Mundakkai and Government Vocational Higher Secondary School, Chooralmala, are helping the authorities identify bodies of children being brought from the disaster site to the mortuary of Meppadi primary health centre. Why? Because they know these faces as well as the children's parents do.
The schools, where they have worked for years, have now been reduced to a muddy pile or a mess of concrete and slush. The teachers have barely recovered from the shock loss around them. But now they have to look closely at the swollen, broken, disfigured faces of their students to identify them. “It's heart-breaking. Their family members are missing; there is no one else to identify them, we are doing whatever we can,” says Aneesh TK, the physical science teacher at GVHSS, Chooralmala.
Shalini, a teacher who got transferred from Mundakkai LP school to Meenangadi school, struggles to hold back her tears as she talks over the phone from Meppadi hospital. She had worked at Mundakkai for two years during which she grew close to the children. Six students she had taught in Class 4 are missing along with three students she had taught last year.
“It's a small school and we know their parents. The villagers and everybody were so cooperative. I came back to visit the children last month. When I came to know about the disaster, I was shattered. Immediately I rushed to the hospital to see if I could help with something. One of the teachers asked me if I could identify bodies and I said yes. I remember them very clearly, I identified a girl named Ashina and some others,” says Shalini.
Hours after the landslide, an old video of the Chooralmala school in all its glory has been circulating on social media messaging app; in stark contrast to the present grim reality. The video was made by the school authorities along with the children to be shown at Gramolsavam. “We celebrated the school anniversary as a huge event. All villagers took part in the festivities. We screened our film that day,” says Jayarajan C, retired headmaster of the school.
The ground that hosted stalls as part of the event has been washed away. The old buildings have crumbled. Only the new building constructed for the high school section remains. Cracks have surfaced in office buildings. The toilet and kitchen are buried in the mud.
“It wasn't just a workplace for us. We were a team and all the villagers were really friendly to us. We had many collectives in our school. We have lost our children and our school now,” says Aneesh.
He has a bigger task at hand than identifying the bodies. “We identified the body of one of our boys named Aswin. His sister Avantika is badly injured, we don't know about their parents. What are we supposed to tell her, she is in pain and probably she is the only survivor in her family,” says Aneesh.
