Malegaon is struggling to find its bearing. Three days after as many blasts tore through the festive afternoon and killed 30, 10 of them children, the town’s residents are finding it hard to put their lives back on the track. And nowhere is the emotional scar more visible than in the town’s schools.

Schools in the vicinity of Bada Kabrastan — the heart of the carnage on September 8 — have seen dismal attendance after they reopened on Sunday. “Normally, we have about 50 children attending each class. But since Sunday, we have seen only 15-20 of them come,” said Sayeed Asif Ali, 48, teacher at the Municipal Corporation’s Urdu School No. 40. The school lies merely 300 metres from the blast site.

“Most of the students, staying in the surrounding areas like Raunaqabad and Abbas Nagar, witnessed the blast and appear traumatised. All that these children have been talking about for the past few days is what they saw in the mosque that day,” he said.

The school with grades up to VIIth has 330 students, mostly children of powerloom workers. The school has lost three students while a number of students have lost a family member in the tragedy. Apart from the 10 under-12 children killed in the Shabe Barat-day attacks, more than 100 have been injured.

Eleven-year-old Wasif Mohammad is troubled talking about how he saw a man’s head being blown away in one of the blasts. Tanveer Ahmed, 12, student of the Moti Educational Society’s primary school, miraculously escaped death that afternoon but now looks completely disoriented.

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