Scarred for life, children recreate their lost village in paintings at Wayanad relief camps

Kalpetta: On the ground floor of a relief camp in Wayanad, around 20 children have gathered. They sing, dance, paint and there is also a magic show going on. In a painting session, their strokes recapture the beauty of life they have lost, the village they have lived in peace and the beautiful days they have spent with their parents, barely a week ago.

A group of psychosocial counsellors from various districts prod the children on as smiles slowly return to their glum faces in the relief camps, thanks to the earnest efforts of the Department of Women and Child Welfare to bring children back to normalcy with the help of counsellors from across the state.

There are hundreds of children below 15 years old who have lost both their parents, either mother or father, and some of them have lost their entire family members. Moreover, most of them had been through the ordeal of being washed off in the gushing waters and miraculously escaping from the grip of death.

"Now more and more children are participating in the activities and the parents are also cooperating. On our first day, there were only 12 children when we came and started our first programme,'' said Sarika Ramdas, a psychosocial counsellor from Malappuram. What worries the counsellors is the fact that once the children go back to their new rented homes with they would be in a bad state of mind. The children above 15 also need serious intervention.

''There should be continuous attention of counsellors on such children for at least three years,'' said Aysha Nihala, another counsellor. Meanwhile, Minister for Culture and Youth Welfare Saji Cheriyan, told reporters here that more and more such psycho-counselling sessions would be organised for the survivors.