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A poignant film

Life on a track A film on street children

Anyone who has seen Slumdog Millionaire should surely see this muted 52-minute documentary ‘Platform No: 8’ directed with sympathy and style by Padma Reddy, a first film from a well-known woman activist of Andhra Prades h. Working with a committed NGO, Sathi, (Society for Assistance to Children in Difficult Situations) which shelters, educates, and restores runaway children to their families, Padma Reddy has produced a classic which features these unfortunate children on their own terms.

Neither judgmental nor sensationalist, the film adopts the attitudes of the several dedicated volunteers who work with Sathi. They meet the children as they get off a train, a very gentle encounter, win their trust, accompany them to a shelter in the city, and enjoy their games, their bathing, and a hearty lunch with them. We hear the volunteers gently ask the children why they ran away, and learn that mostly it was because they feared further beatings. After a period, when the children have learned something, and enjoyed themselves, they are conducted back to their homes to appropriately contrite elders. The volunteers work with the families as well, to see that the children are better understood and respected. Success seems to depend on meeting the runaways on the platform itself, before they are hardened to a vagabond life on the streets or the platform.

The film gets its title from a platform of Secunderabad Railway Station which has become home to the older children. Here we meet children who earn money collecting plastic bottles, children who are junkies and apathetic. The volunteers are able to win away even some of these ‘platform-hardened’ children, with their gentle ways. A few of these are then returned home. The film honestly shows us how they are unable to bring round some of these bright and lovely children, who just run away and are lost to gangs, to drugs, and to an early death.

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