INTRODUCTION

A fire is burning strong. A fire not out of wood but papers, not out of some old newspaper sheets or waste books but out of the pages of school books and dairies. Two children, Manu, a boy of 8, and Aashi, a girl of 5, are sitting at a corner of veranda, very silent, watching their books converting from pages to ashes with all there homework and hard work of a year in them.

A woman is crying inside the room, a low cry. Some people from the nearby houses are gathered around her, trying to calm her down, trying to sympathize, telling her that hope is still there as long as God is there. But they themselves know how hard it is for her to move on with life now.

Children sitting around the flames arising out of their books are thinking, fighting with all kind of questions. Will they be going to school anymore? If they’ll, when? What will they say if teacher ask about the books? And what will they say when their friends will ask about the father? May be they are thinking about their crying mother and may be they are cursing their father who is never going to come back again. God only knows, if they at their age can judge their father’s action, I guess they can't.