Former school champ forced to sleep in toilet

Cherthala: M S Sharika hogged the limelight when she won gold in the senior girls' javelin throw event at the 2015 State School Athletics Championship. It was her first medal at the state-level event and what was expected to be the first of many. But what followed was a life of untold misery.

Sharika, 19, and her family now live in a tiny, broken-down shelter with plastic roofing on a five-cent plot at Mathamangalam near Pattanakkad. While her parents would sleep on the uneven mud floor, the cramped toilet is Sharika’s 'bedroom'!

“The toilet is the only structure here with concrete walls and roof. So I’m forced to sleep in that,” she says.

Sharika was a Plus Two student of SCU Government VHSS, Pattanakkad, when she clinched the yellow metal at the state schools meet. Catapulted to a local celebrity status after her golden feat, it was Sharika, along with K C Venugopal, MP, who inaugurated the centrally funded approach road passing in front of her house.

But the girl’s exploits on the field did not change their life for the better as the family continues to live in the flood-prone makeshift dwelling. After remaining submerged in the floodwaters for weeks, the medals won by Sharika at various school and amateur meets lost their coating and turned white.

She could not concentrate on studies as her main focus was on excelling in sports. “I could not clear the Plus Two examination. I would have received grace marks and passed the exams if the school authorities had given out my certificates in time,” she laments.

Her father Saseendran used to be a coconut palm climber before he stopped working due to health issues. Now, the eight-member family is dependent on the meagre income earned by her mother Usha and brother Sarath by catching and selling fish.

Five years ago, the family started constructing a new house with the Rs 1.80 lakh grant allotted by the state government. The local MP provided an assistance of Rs 50,000 as well. But the works still are at the initial stage. Though the block panchayat had promised to offer Rs 3 lakh, the amount has not been released yet. The family did not receive any aid under the state government’s Life Mission project.