Courage Takes Strange

FormsBy Miraghe Sir

Kai. S. V. Thakar Madhyamik Vidyalaya,

Dhadgaon

National Bravery AwardNational Bravery Award (Rashtriya Veerta

Puruskar)Type : CivilianCategory : Children between age 6 and age 18Instituted : 1957Last awarded : 2014 (for the year 2013)Total awarded : 871 children (618 boys and

253 girls)

Awarded by Government of India & Indian Council for Child Welfare (ICCW)

Asma Khan, Mumbai

THE DAY THAT WAS: JULY 26,

2005 

AWARDED FOR: SAVING NEARLY 40 CHILDREN FROM

DROWNING 

It could be a scene straight out of a horror film. Only it was reality in suburban Mumbai. Rain lashed on the ground. A hundred children wailed in terror in a cramped, dark hall. Water gushed in from all sides and inched up. The inmates of Additional Bal Griha of the Children's Aid Society, mostly terrified children, sang their daily prayer: "Itni shakti humme dena data". Asma, however, was the odd one out. She started calculating how soon the children will start drowning. "I could only think of one thing. That I couldn't bear to see the smaller ones drown. I am their didi." She picked up two of the smaller kids and jumped into the water-nearly five feet of dirty, black liquid. "I don't know how to swim. So, slowly I moved across the slippery ground, keeping my head up to keep the water from getting into my mouth and nose." She made over a dozen such trips, carrying nearly 40 kids on her shoulders to safety. Wasn't she scared? "Nothing scares me," she says. Why didn't any of the other inmates join her? "Oh, well, I'm the tallest!" The girl doesn't know who or where her parents are ("Kya pata," she says). Nor does she care to know about her life history from the orphanage files. But Asma certainly knows more about parenting than most. She loves to watch TV serials-Shararat and Tu Tu Mein Mein.

Parth S. Sutaria, Panvel

THE DAY THAT WAS: JULY 26, 2005 AWARDED FOR: DRAWING A FLOOD-TRAPPED FAMILY TO SAFETY

 The rain refused to let up. The ground-floor of the building, inside the ONGC colony at Panvel, was already flooded with water and the level was rising by the minute. At 7 p.m., the power went off, plunging the entire area into darkness. By that time, the water had risen from ground-level to a height of five feet. Parth and his mother were busy packing, afraid that they might have to vacate their first floor flat, too. His father, a finance manager with ONGC, was stuck on his way home. Suddenly they heard screams and banging. Parth rushed downstairs and waded through the water-neck-deep by this time-towards the ground-floor flat. Their door, he found out, was stuck and, with the water-level rising alarmingly the trapped family faced an ominous future. Parth found a piece of log from a neighbour and began to hammer on the door. "People from the entire building had come down, but just stood paralysed," he says. After a while, the mesh gave way but the main door still wouldn't open. By this time the water came almost up to his mouth. "I don't remember anything," he says, "just that door and the children crying inside and that I had to get them out." After many more heaves, the top half splintered and fell through. The family was pulled out to safety. Not surprisingly, it is the army and its spirit of service that he admires the most.

Antara Raju Shrivastav, Andheri

THE DAY THAT WAS: MAY 30, 2005 AWARDED FOR: COURAGE IN THE FACE OF DANGER AND FOILING A ROBBERY ATTEMPT AT HOME.

 At 2.30 in the afternoon, Antara was taking a bath. Suddenly she heard an unusual commotion and came out. The sight that greeted her was that of four men, who had forced their way in, pinning her mother to the ground. They had pulled out guns, knives and choppers and were trying to suffocate her. "They put a gun to her head and were asking for the keys to the locker," says Antara. Her first reaction was to help her mother. "Then I thought, how can I do that? They are fully armed," she explains. She tried to retreat quietly to her bedroom and raise an alarm. But just as she was closing her bedroom door, one of the miscreants spotted her. He started hitting the door, trying to break it down. Antara quickly grabbed the phone. She called up the police control room, informed her father, who was away at work, and also rang her neighbours. She then opened the window and shouted for help. The watchman of the building and two constables from the police station, right opposite the building, ran to their apartment. Anticipating trouble, the robbers tried to flee. The watchmen managed to nab two of them. "The whole thing happened within 10 minutes and I think it changed me forever," smiles Antara.

India's National Bravery Award winners 2007