Twenty-two-year-old B. Sreelekha had been dreaming of graduating as a doctor from V.N. Karzin National Medical University in Kharkiv in just a few months and get back home. Now, she lives in a bunker startled every now and then, as an explosion goes off somewhere nearby. “Drinking water got exhausted. I don’t know what I will eat tomorrow. We have been waiting endlessly to hear from the Indian embassy on when we will be rescued,” she says. Depleting food and water supply, extreme cold conditions, hopping from one place to another looking for safety, this has become the plight of students stranded in war-torn Ukraine desperate to get back here. Alexander Jacob George, pursuing medicine in Kharkiv, says students are switching between bunkers and metro stations for safety.
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“We have been surviving on one slice of bread a day. Since the places are so crowded, we are likely to fall sick anytime. One of my friends already developed respiratory congestion living in a bunker. The toilets are so bad that we dread stepping into them. We are distressed beyond words. We are hoping the Indian embassy officials come to rescue soon. I don’t know how long we can survive under these conditions,” he says. S. Vaishnavi, a fourth year student who hails from Krishnagiri, says there are around 500 students from Tamil Nadu in Kharkiv.
“The flat opposite ours has been damaged in the bombing and we are afraid to go stand in queue to buy essentials due to constant explosions. The shops are empty, which means our supplies will last only two or three days. We are told to stay safe. But how can we manage without food or water? We are not even bothered about what we eat, we are just managing to sustain ourselves with whatever little we have,” she says.
She along with Muskan from Ludhiana, Glamalin from Kanniyakumari and Anna from Kerala are staying in the first-level basement of a flat, which is safer than her own flat. Students, while anxiously waiting to be rescued and yearning to return home, are going through mental agony wondering what will happen to their education. “After spending five years here, now, I don’t know if I will graduate or not, whether there will be an online examination or if I have to get back here. My future seems bleak now, be it my safety or education,” she says.
(With inputs from Deepa H Ramakrishnan)