Rakib appears in his vest and shorts. His large eyes burning with an unknown intensity. He comes running with a toy gun in his hand. "Bang! Bang! Bang!" And he giggles. And then he turns to the large poster. "Let me," he says and puts out his tiny hands of a four-year old. He puts them on a black imprint, a size or two bigger than his. Rakib smiles with a proud look and then the imprints start looking sinisterly evil.

Sumon, 12, Noakhali. He is dead. Akash, 14 months, Faridpur. He is gone too. Hasan, 8, Narsingdi. Is he dead too? Not sure. Oh yes, he is. Asad, 7. When did he die? Only last week. Imprints and names, imprints and names. All dead.

Then Rakib giggles again and bolts into the next room. He does not look like a child in a terminal cancer stage. His forehead feels a little hot from fever. But he surely does not look like somebody whose final words have been spoken by the doctors. His blood cancer has relapsed after two years of treatment, two years of excruciating pain of chemotherapy and two years of spending the last drops from the parents' savings. A relapse case has no chance at all.

A quaint tin-shed at Bhutergoli looks surprisingly pleasant inside. A large lounge offers the playground for the children. A clean mat has been rolled out over the cement floor. Large pictures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Ducks hang around. On the white mat are four children all almost of the same age around seven or eight.

Annesha (5 years 8 montsh) lays down a railway, carefully putting together the tracks. Asad, 6, watches with glee, a big rail engine in his hand. All set, the engine starts chugging round and round the track. But Tripti, 6, does not like it much, or she has other ideas. She tromps across the track, upending the engine with its wheels still going round and round in motion. Asad throws a plastic bunny at Binti and starts crying. Tripti just smiles. "They cry," she announces and runs her tiny hands on her scalp -- the curly hair vanished with the intensity of chemotherapy.

"What are these?" she has black patches on her head and hands and legs, as if she was hurt badly.

Tripti glances at the marks and says: "B-e-l-a-d. I have B-e-l-a-d. That is why."

"I also have b-e-l-a-d." Tripti comes forward and chirps in her high-pitch voice. These children, they all have it what they call b-e-l-a-d for blood cancer. They are just part of the 6,000 or more children who get this deadly, inexplicable disease every year in Bangladesh. Without knowing what fate they are approaching, they mostly die as Salma Chowdhury would tell us at this shelter home for children called ASHIC (an abbreviation for A Shelter for Helpless Ill Children). In the last over four years, the centre received 170 cancer children. Only 19 of them are alive today.

"I started this cancer centre after my own son died at four from the disease. Many parents coming from distant places cannot afford treatment of their children in Dhaka. They don't have places to stay as cancer treatment is a lengthy process, often taking two to three years," Salma says. "So I have opened this place where the parents can come and stay with their children for free. They have to cook their own food in the kitchen. Sometimes, we arrange medicines, but that is a rare thing to happen as fund is in short supply."

And cancer treatment is costly as Rani, mother of Tripti, would say. "I have sold my everything and still I don't know if my daughter will be cured one day. Every week, every month I have to come to Dhaka from Gaibandha for chemotherapy. My whole life is now ruined. We have already spent over two lakhs taka. Just today I had to buy a medicine for 5,900 taka. I don't know what is my daughter's future."

"I will be a doctor," Tripti mutters shyly. She pretends administering an injection with her fingers. "It hurts. But I don't cry." And then she smiles, showing her bloody gum. Infection. It happens when they go through chemotherapy dripping low-intensity poisons into the body to kill the weak but fast growing cancer cells. They also get diarrhea and stomach pain.

Tripti runs away to her mates. These children, they don't like to fuss around with the grown-ups and they barely need their mothers staying at the centre in separate rooms. These children know they don't have all the time in the world and they want to use it playing.

"I want to go home. I want to see my chickens," mutters Annesha. "My mejokaku (uncle) loves me a lot. He buys me toys. I want to see him."

"No one knows how much time God has left for them," Salma says. "Here, you see all the children we still hope against hope to be cured. I can't provide much for them, but I still try from my pocket."

But she runs another centre in Dhanmondi where Rakib stays. This one is much more plush. A real nice modern building. Jazzy toys and colourful foreign books deck up the rooms. There is the nice piano you can play and sing to the karaoke. The music system hums slowly. The sports cars that run on remote controls. Nice colourful beds almost looking like the ones of the dwarfs of the Snow White movie.

Behind all this swanky looks lurks death in its ugliest guise. The palm prints. The reminders of the loved ones who has moved on to that strange, enigmatic world leaving you behind. The colour wash. The imitation of life. The transience of human life.

"Rakib! Did you have your lunch?" Salma asks and the little boy shrieks something incomprehensible.

"How much time he has?" Salma asks herself. "I got some funds from .. and set up this palliative care centre for those like Rakib."

Palliative is the last stage in a cancer patient's life when they have nothing to look forward to but some relief from pain and despair. And a cancer patient's last days are the most horrific. Slowly, they watch the last strand of life draining out of them. The pain becomes excruciating. Their kidney fails. Their lungs become full of water. Their body swells. They have throbbing pain in head.

"It is then they need some intensive care," says Salma. "They deserve the best time of their life when time is so little so that they can pass away peacefully. We try to give them love. And we try to give physiological support to parents who are facing the imminent disasters of their life. This really matters to the patients."

And it mattered to Imran who came here when he was only 13. When he was 15, the doctors uttered the final verdict and Imran was shifted to the Palliative care centre where he stayed for a few months. Then as his condition deteriorated beyond any more treatment, he was taken to his home in Chatkhil, Noakhali.

On May 6, Salma got a call on her mobile. It was Imran. "Madam aunty, I want to come to the centre once more," Imran's voice sounded feeble.

"Yes, you will come Imran," Salma replied, knowing very well this will not happen. You need ambulances to shift patients in their terminal days and ASHIC has no such vehicles. "You get treatment there and get well first."

Six days later, Imran became restless. At three in the afternoon, he asked his mother to make a bed on the floor. As he was laid there, he asked for his father's mobile. "I want to make a call to madam aunty," Imran's voice sounded laboured.

As the phone was passed to him, he held it tight. And then he closed his eyes to the world. Forever.

Imran's palm prints still show on the art paper. A pair of bright yellow imprints. Imprints that speak of another world unknown to all living beings. Imprints that say 'I was here one day'. Imprints that say 'I will not be here tomorrow'. Imprints that say 'Hold my hand'.