Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Schoolgirl dragged five-year-olds to safety

By Sandhya Soman

CHENNAI, JAN. 6. Water still features in B. Mala's dreams. She gets up in the middle of the night to check whether her periyamma's (mother's elder sister) house at Urur Olcott Kuppam is flooded and whether she has to drag two of her neighbour's children back to safety again.

Thirteen-year-old Mala of class V is back at Olcott Kuppam Middle School. So are her five-year-old friends, R. Ashok Kumar and A. Nivedha, who stood crying in the face of last month's tsunami that came sweeping down the narrow Bhajanai Koil Street in Besant Nagar after washing away the huts by the sea.

Mala was pumping water in front of her school to fill up two pots for her home.

Around 9 a.m., she was running towards the water in search of her mother, passing by hundreds of people dashing to safety.

Her mother Mathi stood plastered to the wall with water up to her neck. Water was closing in on Mala when she saw Ashok and Nivedha standing stunned in front of the surging waves. "Move away," she screamed. They didn't.

She rushed forward, lifted Nivedha and dropped her into an Onyx garbage autorickshaw before climbing onto it.

She seized little Ashok by his hand and pulled him inside. The auto driver sped them away to safety.

"It was easy to lift Nivedha. But Ashok was heavy," Mala recalls.

Her school is proud of her. Mala is resourceful and always ready to help others, says head mistress J. Margaret. And she could become the class topper if she does not miss classes to help out her mother, a domestic worker.

Mala is most happy among her classmates: laughing, learning and planning to become a Tamil teacher.

The chirpy girl talks about how the teachers drilled into her the story of two children who were saved from drowning by a school student. A lesson well taught.

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