The nine-year-old who tried to save a younger child

The citation

Vyoma Priya of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, was nine years old in the official list of the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar 2025, where her name carries a word no parent should have to read beside their child’s: posthumous. The national citation records her act in a single sentence: she “lost her young life while selflessly trying to save a six-year-old child during an electrical accident, displaying extraordinary courage beyond her years.”

An ordinary evening in 2024

What happened, as her family and the award accounts tell it, belongs to an ordinary evening in 2024. Children were playing in the park of the apartment community where Vyoma lived. A metal slide in the park had become electrified through a damaged underground cable, and a six-year-old boy who had climbed it was in sudden danger.

Vyoma, who was eight at the time, as her mother later recalled, went to the younger child’s aid — and lost her own life in the attempt. There is no lesson in how it happened, and this story does not look for one. What her country chose to honour was the instinct itself: a child who saw someone smaller in danger and moved toward them, not away.

Remembered

On Veer Bal Diwas, 26 December 2025, President Droupadi Murmu conferred the Bal Puraskar for bravery on Vyoma in New Delhi, naming her in the ceremony address among the children who “lost their lives while saving the lives of others.” Her mother, Archana Sivaramakrishnan, received the award on her behalf, and called the moment “bittersweet,” saying: “We wish she could have been here to receive this award herself.” Vyoma is remembered in her neighbourhood park, by her family, and now in the national record — a nine-year-old whose whole story is that, when it mattered, she did not look away. Vyoma’s courage was, at its heart, about looking out for someone smaller than herself.

What are the everyday ways we can notice when someone around us needs help — and be the person who responds with kindness? That is a question from us, not part of her record.