Kozhikode: Kunjatta is excited and busy. For days, she has been rehearsing a song under the flex board-roof of her home.
The prayer, she has been rehearsing, opened the statewide ‘Praveshanolsavam’, the celebration marking the beginning of the new school year online on Tuesday.
As the Class 5 student of BEM UP School practised the prayer, her equally excited mother captured every moment on a phone the woman had borrowed from her brother Rahul.
Kunjatta’s grandparents Manikrishnan, a heart patient who had undergone three surgeries, and Baby looked on, even as their pet cat vied for attention.
Kunjatta is the girl’s pet name. On school records, she is K Ananya Ranjith, daughter of tile-worker Ranjith. She has been using the mobile phones of either her father or uncle to attend the online classes. The family has an extra phone, but recharging it monthly is beyond their means.
She has been learning music under singer Junad of SK Cultural Nilayam for more than four years, with the support of her uncle Rahul, an optician. The girl had earlier sung at a public event at the Town Hall.
Her residence is on PWD’s ‘puramboke’, land outside revenue records. Her family does not own the land, and they were among the 19 families shifted here 29 years ago.
A few years ago, the families were promised alternative land. Neither was the promise met, nor were the title deeds of the present land registered in the names. The colony has nine students, studying from Class three to degree course.
Authorities have been reiterating the same instruction to the families every year: do not repair the roofs, since steps to rehabilitate them will commence soon. With the onset of the monsoon just two days away, the residents are apprehensive whether the rains will spare their shacks.
The concerns, apparently, have not affected Kunjatta as she practised “engumengum nirayum velichame…,” roughly the Malayalam version of “Lead, kindly light… .”
