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Back on the tracks

Photos: Rajeev Bhatt

True tales (Clockwise from above:) Brijesh Pandey leading a tour round New Delhi Station; children of families on the railway tracks who come to Salaam Baalak Trust’s outreach programme; John Thomson flanked by Shahadat (right) and Brijesh of SBT

Do you know why so many children run away from home to end up on India’s city streets? The question is posed by Brijesh, a young man guiding tourists around the New Delhi railway station area. Brijesh is part of a group of boys from Salaam Baal ak Trust that has been operating the Salaam Baalak City Walk for the past three years. The tour covers aspects of India’s Capital that are routinely brushed under the carpet — a day in the life of the city’s homeless children, their favourite haunts, how they earn a living and learn survival skills to daunt the sturdiest stunt artist.

When Danny Boyle’s team was raking in the Baftas and Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire, many were euphoric over the Indian contribution to the film — largely, A.R. Rahman, Resul Pookutty and Anil Kapoor. Yet the essential Indian contribution was surely poverty, the character without which such a film could never be made. And as Brijesh tells it, poverty too is the spoilsport that pushes children out of the protection of their families into the hardest school of life. “Because of poverty, people send their children to work. After a while they see other children going to school and playing, and they feel jealous. That is why most of the children run away.”

Meanwhile, Slumdog’s success has had an unpublicised fallout. It has dramatically increased interest in the City Walk. According to John Thomson, a U.K.-based volunteer who conceptualised the project in 2006, the walk raised a record Rs.1.5 lakhs in February, when Slumdog was sending champagne corks popping across the world. This was mostly from donations made at the end of the walk. However, the average is not bad either, with 150 to 200 people coming on the tour and raising approximately a lakh every month.

Brijesh, born in Bihar, ran away from home at age eight. A child of teachers who separated due to irreconcilable differences, he was sent to live with relatives, ill-treated and beaten. “I was really, really angry. That’s why I ran away. When I ran away I took only two pens with me. I didn’t even take any money,” he says.

Hiding in the toilet of a train overnight, he ended up at Kanpur Central. Here, found crying by a boy who had already made the platform his headquarters, Brijesh says he was initiated into the world of a street child within months, selling refilled water bottles found in the trash. “Within a year I was smoking. I stayed there for two-and-a-half years.” Arrested twice for selling untreated water, the ten-year-old decided to move. “That’s why I came to Delhi.”

Eventually he joined Salaam Baalak Trust. Having completed school, Brijesh is studying for a degree in tourism management from IGNOU. “I am also learning Spanish because I want to have my own tourism company,” says Brijesh. The peace and pain on his face are intensely moving.

Thomson notes, “A lot of people don’t believe they can change. But if people are given a chance they can always change.”

To book a Salaam Baalak City Walk, call 9910099348 or 9873130383.

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