There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were wrote Dwight Eisenhower.

How true he was.

Things will never get back to the way they were at pwhy! I will never be greeted again by Saheeda’s beaming smile as I alight from my scooter in the morning and enter the pwhy building. I will never be asked to scold her when she acts stubborn and refuses to go to her sewing class. I will never watch her dance with gay abandon with her hearing impaired friend Rinky. I will never watch her try and painfully learn new sounds with her speech therapist.

I will never do any of these things because Saheeda is no more. She left our world yesterday. We are all stunned and shocked. I remember the last time I saw her just under a month ago. She was all set to go to her village for a wedding and was all excited. It seems she got very sick at the village and was hospitalised there. As she was not getting better her family brought her back and admitted to Safdarjung hospital last Saturday. She breathed her last the next morning.

Saheeda was one of our first students. She came to us when she was still a child and we have watched her grow and bloom in spite of her impairment. We had hopes and dreams for her and were trying to fulfill them. For the past year or so, she had been attending a beauty course at a parlour and would have graduated in a few months and then got a job just like her best friend Rinky.

I do not know how, in a few hours from now, I am going to face my little special class and tell them the terrible news. They will be devastated. Saheeda was their special didi, one loved by all. I do not how I will explain to the little motley crew of God’s special children that God himself decided to take one of their own away. I myself cannot even begin to understand why such a tragedy happened.

I just know that things will never get back to the way they were.

May Saheeda’s beautiful silent soul rest in peace.

Share some glimpses of her short life