Students recall experience in war-affected country

Parents of Aniana Anna, Claton Oswald D'Souza, Ahmed Saad Arshad and Shalvin Preethi Aranha could hardly control their emotions seeing their children from Ukraine back home as they came out of the international airport here on Monday. They hugged each other as tears rolled down from their eyes when they landed here via Delhi.

"Really relieved to be back in our own backyard. I do not like to go back and would like to continue my studies in India," said Anaina Anna, one of the four medical students from Dakshina Kannada, after a gruelling 10-day long journey from the war-hit country to the safety of New Delhi.

"The joy of being with our parents and other family members cannot really be explained. The journey from the war-hit regions to my motherland was gruesome and difficult to forget," said Arshad.

The students, except for Aranha, had to spend nearly a week in bunkers near their hostels in Kyiv and Kharkiv during bombing in the surroundings. "I woke up in the morning to see bombing outside the hostel on February 24," said Arshad. "It was all normal till that day and the bombing caused panic," said D'Souza.

He and the other students followed the advisories and rushed into the dim-lit, crammed spaced bunkers. They stayed there eating chocolates, bread and limited drinking water.

"The death of Naveen Shekarappa, who was my senior, added to our tension," said Anna.

D’Souza said that they were forced to live with limited resources in bunkers as curfew was clamped outside and there were fights to get hold of eatables in malls and grocery shops.