For Vyas brothers, the burning pain just won't go away

AHMEDABAD: "Mummy, mane please paani aap ne. Mane bahu taras laagi che (Mummy, please give me water. I am very thirsty)." "Mummy, khavanu kem nathi aapti, mane bahu bhookh laagi che (Mummy, why aren't you giving me food, I am very hungry)."
As these plaintive wails of 9-year-old Yash and his 12-year-old brother Rohan pierce through the special G-1 burns ward, their mother Geeta bursts into tears.She is yet to tell the children that their father Dushyant Vyas died in the blasts. Geeta (40) is helpless. Neither can she give Yash a spoonful of water nor Rohan a morsel to eat without the doctor's permission. The two are the youngest survivors of Saturday's serial terror bombings in Ahmedabad and are battling for their lives ��� Yash with 50% burns and Rohan with 80%. Doctors give them little hope and only two spoons of water every couple of hours.
Their plight even dulls the pain of the other 14 terror victims admitted to the same ward. "I can battle my injuries but the cries of these children break my heart. What wrong had they done to deserve this?" says Sunil Kakde, lying in a nearby bed, writhing in pain, his body swathed in bandages.
Geeta is numbed by her own bereavement but won't give up on the children. "I just have to be strong. I don't know what will happen to them. I pray to God to save my children."
The whole hospital prays with her, as the only thing the children were guilty of was excitement at the thought of learning to ride the bicycle their father, a laboratory assistant at the cancer ward of the Civil Hospital, had bought for them.
The two children had pushed their tired, reluctant father out of their house towards the wide green overlooking the entry to the hospital's trauma centre. They rode straight into the jaws of death. As Dushyant and the wobbly kids on the bike approached the area, ambulances were bringing in the first victims of the bombings.
That's when the car bomb went off at the Civil Hospital. "The children are stable but very critical. One cannot say what will happen next as the burns are very deep, curtailing the body's ability to fight infection," sayd Dr M F Sheikh, head of plastic surgery.