Akshaya Kumar Sahoo A SACK OF sorrow has settled on their shaky slim shoulders at an age when they should be spinning around with arms out in their yard. A spurt of desolation has imprisoned them in their murky home when they could be fooling about with their friends in the playground. A half-a-dozen orphaned urchins they are, wondering in agony of fiery hunger, who is the luckiest among them to accompany death when it visits their house next time. For some years now, the house of Somanath Dharua, in Bakhalikhuti village of Pharasara Panchayat, a segment of Boden block in Nuapada district in Orissa, has been a haunting place of the cruel god of death taking tolls intermittently at its own sweet will, without discriminating between the old and the young. It is the latest in a spate of identical incidents occurring unabated in this district, allegedly in the absence of any government succor or solace. The government announced social welfare and security plans and programmes such as National Rural Health Mission, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and Integrated Child Development Scheme appear to be absent here. The local authorities were not aware of the plight of the Dharua family. When contacted, Boden block development officer Laxmikant P. Pradhan said: