A week before the accident that would take his life, 16-year-old Sarang was in a field in Attingal, playing football. It was what he loved best, he even had a football scholarship, his father would say. That day though, Sarang was injured on his left leg, an accident on the field that somehow seems to have led to another fatal one on the road on May 6. He was conscious and talking for two of the 11 days he was in hospital, before his death on May 17. Two days later, Kerala’s Minister of Education V Sivankutty would turn emotional as he spoke of Sarang. He was announcing the Class 10 results for the State School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) examination and Sarang had scored A-plus in all the subjects. In newspapers the next day, the boy was hailed for his grades and for saving multiple lives, as his family had donated all of Sarang’s organs.
“His mother Rajani had spoken about it before, asking us to give away her organs to those who need it when she died. The children – Sarang and his elder brother Yashwanth – said they wanted the same thing. For the 12 days I was in hospital with Sarang, I saw and heard a lot of stories of people waiting for an organ donation as their loved ones fought for life. When Sarang was pronounced brain-dead, we told the doctors our decision, even before they asked,” Sarang’s father Bineesh Kumar, an artist in Attingal, tells TNM.
Attingal is where Sarang grew up, a municipal town that you pass on your way from Thiruvananthapuram to Varkala. This is where he learnt to play and love football. He did well in academics, but his heart was in football, even getting selected in the Young Blasters team from the Sparta Arena, a turf in Venpalavattom. His brother Yashwanth, whom he was very close to, knew just how much Sarang wanted to play football.
Sarang on the field
When the family decided to donate the organs, Yashwanth asked if his brother’s legs couldn’t be given away so they could see someone else play football with it. “But that surgery has not yet been done in India, we were told. His hands, however, were given to a 20-day-old baby who was fighting for life. Someday that kid will grow up and come to us, and we can see a part of Sarang again. Even if we don’t see the child or any of the others that Sarang’s organs gave life to, we are happy knowing that they are alive and moving on,” Bineesh says.
His voice does not crack when he talks about organ donation, that is a decision the family is happy about. A week after his son’s death, he can clearly recount the day of the accident, when Sarang went to the hospital with his mother to get the injury checked, and on the way back visited an uncle who was soon leaving for the Gulf. But Bineesh pauses when he talks about Sarang waving goodbye to the uncle at half past 3 and getting on an auto rickshaw to go home with his mother.
Sarang with a placard advocating road safety
The rickshaw turned over, Sarang falling under it, bleeding. “The doctors said he would not be conscious for 72 hours, but he woke up in two days and began talking to us. We checked his memory, asked him which day his SSLC results would come and he told us the date. To his uncle, he asked for boots to play football with. To his mother, he asked for a lot of chocolates.” Another pause as Bineesh gulps down the memory.
After two days of talking to everyone, Sarang slipped back to unconsciousness with a fever. An infection began to grow on him, making him worse every passing day. On the 12th day, they lost all hope. But Bineesh’s voice is clear as he talks about the way the family could take a decision that would save so many others. Even in his misery, his hope is that more people understand this, he says, that a body buried will be gone in four days, but giving life to others would mean you still have some part of the person in this world, living through another.
