By Amanda Yong

SHE has been in so much pain that she is terrified of going to the bathroom even when she needs to pee.

So fearful is she of the sharp sting from water touching her wounds that she has not had a shower for a week.

Instead, her parents have to give her a sponge-bath three times a day.

Then there is the fear of going back to pre-school.

She has skipped classes since getting slashed last Tuesday.

She will go next year - but to another school.

And her parents hope the 4-year-old will once again wake up looking forward to school, as she used to.

But for now, it is hard to take little Keertika Dana's mind off what happened.

She suffered deep wounds, requiring 12 stitches, when she was slashed twice on her left leg with a paper cutter by her best friend in pre-school, Maya (not her real name).

Keertika and Maya had become fast friends after they joined the Punggol Central Education Centre under the PAP Community Foundation in January.

Last Tuesday morning, they were playing alone in one corner of their classroom.

Their teacher was focusing on a group of children in another part of the room.

Then, Maya spotted the paper cutter lying on a table a few metres away.

Its catch was off and the blade was exposed.

According to Keertika, Maya picked up the knife and called out to her: 'Look, Keertika, look!'

Out of curiosity, Keertika reached out to touch the exposed blade and realised that it was sharp.

Before Keertika knew it, Maya had slashed her below her left knee.

Keertika screamed in pain as she covered her leg - oozing with blood - with both hands and cried out: 'Don't, Maya, don't!'

But Maya slashed Keertika again, this time lower down her shin.

Keertika's anguished cries drew the attention of the teacher, who apparently burst into tears and panicked when she saw what had happened to the girls.

The teacher, said to be in her 20s, alerted the principal who then bandaged Keertika's wounds.

Meanwhile, Maya appeared to be unaware of the consequences of her actions.

Said Maya's mother, Mrs N, 30, a working professional who asked not to be named: 'She did not know what she did was wrong.

'She only realised (what happened) when everyone started running all around her and started questioning her about what happened.'

Keertika's father, Mr Pannirselvam S K, 35, a technical support analyst, happened to be on leave that day and was waiting to pick her up from school when he received the call that she had been hurt.

'The first thing that came to my mind was what if the knife got to somewhere else?

'We're so lucky she narrowly missed an artery. It could have been Keertika's neck, face or eyes,' he said.

Trembling

He raced to the pre-school, which is one block away from his flat in Compassvale Street.

His heart sank at the sight of his only child, her face pale, her body trembling, lying in the back of a van outside the back entrance of the school.

She started crying again when she saw him. 'Very painful, pa,' whimpered Keertika.

The principal, her teacher and another teacher were by her side.

In the driver's seat was another parent who was there to pick up his child.

He learnt about the incident and had offered to drive Keertika to the nearest clinic, about five minutes away.

The doctor at the clinic immediately referred her to the KK Women's and Children's Hospital.

Carrying Keertika, Mr Pannirselvam, accompanied by the principal, hurried to the hospital in a cab.

The hospital doctor initially decided against injecting Keertika with anaesthetic, applying only a numbing gel.

But he had to change his mind when she started screaming, as he began stitching up her cuts, which were about 4cm long and 2cm wide.

'She was crying, freaking out. I had to talk to her to distract her from the pain,' said Mr Pannirselvam who was by her side throughout the 30-minute ordeal.

Keertika then got a prescription for seven days of paracetamol for the pain.

This article was first published in The New Paper on 23 Sept, 2008.