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| Champa Das with Sunaina at the GMCH on Friday. Picture by Eastern Projections |
Guwahati, Jan 3 : Medical explanations took a backseat today when a 35-year-old woman who had stopped suckling her youngest child several years ago, picked up a wounded baby from her cot at the Gauhati Medical College and fed her at her breast.
A pellet of the bomb that blew up Bhootnath market still lodged in her head, 19-month-old Sunaina Khatoon would not stop wailing this morning — making it difficult for the hospital nurses to tend to her.
Champa Das, a distant relative, stood there watching, unable to bear the little one’s agony and unsure about what to do. The baby’s mother, a vegetable vendor, was recuperating from multiple wounds in another ward.
After a few minutes of helplessness, Champa grabbed Sunaina and began to suckle her.
How she managed it, years after she stopped feeding the last of her three children, is for medics to analyse.
All Champa cared about was that Sunaina had finally stopped crying and was lying secure at her bosom.
When the bomb tore through the busy Bhootnath market yesterday, Munni Begum was suckling Sunaina at her vegetable stall.
One of her sons, eight-year-old Sahil Sheikh, who had stepped out just then to buy a cake took the full impact of the bicycle bomb and died instantly.
Champa, who is a distant relative of Munni’s, arrived at the hospital this morning and found Sunaina wailing hysterically and a nurse trying to calm her.
“I took over but the child was inconsolable, probably because she was hungry and hurt. When I finally breastfed her, she went off to sleep,” Champa said at the paediatric surgical ward of the GMCH.
A doctor at the hospital said Sunaina’s condition has improved since yesterday.
“But there is still a pellet inside her head. A final decision on whether a surgery should be conducted will be taken tomorrow,” he said.
Munni said her husband, a truck driver, lives in Mumbai. “I was breast-feeding Sunaina when the blast occurred. I only remember that she fainted soon after the blast. Although I was injured, I vaguely remember someone pulling Sunaina from my lap before I was lifted into an ambulance,” she said.
Her two other sons are currently staying with their grandmother at Bhootnath.
Champa said she had informed another woman, a relative, to come and replace her for the night at the hospital so that she could go back to her own children, the youngest being eight-year-old Swapna.
“I have left them with my husband but they will not stay without me at night,” Champa, who lives in Kalipur area near Bhootnath, said.
“I will return tomorrow morning,” she added.
Altogether 46 people injured in the blasts are still undergoing treatment at the hospital.
The superintendent of GMCH, K.K. Saikia, said the condition of five of them was critical.