The Gouds were yet to come to terms with the loss of their six-year-old child in Thursday’s horrific train accident at Masaipet. They had just buried him, when the phone rung.
Dhanush’s grief-stricken father Swamy Goud was told by a Yashoda Hospital official that the boy was alive, and undergoing treatment there. An incredulous Goud and his family raced to the hospital and indeed there was Dhanush, whom they thought had died in the accident.
In fact, the Gouds were handed over the body of another child who was declared dead at Balaji Hospital.
If sorrow gave way to instant joy for the Gouds, it was a nightmarish moment for another family – that of Neeraja and Veerababu of Islampur. It was their child Dattatreya, fondly called Dattu, who had died in the accident, and hospital officials mistakenly handed over his body to the Gouds, who cremated him in their village of Kistapur.
It was agony for the crestfallen parents, whose daughter Bhuvana (8) was also killed in the same accident. They had cremated her on Thursday evening and believed that their son was alive and being treated at one of the hospitals in Hyderabad.
A poignant scene it was, when Swamy Goud met Vanaja and Veerababu at Yashoda hospital. The latter told him that their Dattu was alive. “I told them, if he can identify me, he is my son. Otherwise he is yours.” The boy did identify Swamy Goud as his father.
Red-faced officials supervised the exhumation of Dattu’s body and handed it over to the parents.
In fact, Dhanush’s grandfather Laxminarasaiah Goud did not, for a moment, believe that he had died and had argued that it was not his body.
“But they brushed aside my protests,” the old man recalled.
A special birthdayFriday, incidentally, was Dhanush’s birthday, and a very special one at that.
Hospital sources said as he regained consciousness, he revealed his father’s name, and the grieving parents were then informed that their child was still alive.
“We came to know about it in the morning itself, and we rushed to Hyderabad. My son and daughter-in-law returned home, along with the parents of the child they buried, to complete the legal formalities,” said Padma Goud, Dhanush’s grandmother.
“We are very happy. What more could we have asked for on Darshan’s (as Dhanush is fondly called) birthday?” said the relieved grandmother. Indeed, the boy’s birthday turned out to more special, as his condition went from critical in the morning, to stable by 7 in the evening.
His three-year-old sister Lakyamma, nicknamed ‘Lucky’, was curious as to the whereabouts of her brother.
“The little girl kept asking yesterday where her little brother was, but we couldn’t give her an answer. But now we can tell her that he will soon be fine,” said a beaming Padma.
