Miguel Angel Gayo Macías's Blog
April 24, 2018
Return ticket to Childhood
"Here they gave me my first beating."
Shekhar shows tourists the place where he was victim of many assaults when he was a child, not many years ago. Now Shekhar works as a tourist guide, but instead of visiting the monuments of New Delhi, his tour includes the places where poor children live in the New Delhi Train Station. It is what they call 'poorism': tourism of poverty.
The tour starts at one of the platforms. Hundreds of children have made their homes in booths, kiosks and under the stairs of this huge station that transforms every night. As the shadows fall, is open season for hunting and the weaker, more vulnerable fall prey of abuses, beatings and extortions by the police or drunkards. Previously there were also hobo gangs who lived in the station, but the more numerous and better organized children's bands threw them out of 'their' territory.
According to Shekhar, the most coveted hideouts are the ones that offer a better protection from surprise attacks. Like a tin metal roof that covers the electric panels: “the lathi (long sticks) that the policemen carry do not get up there.”
The two most disputed railroads are the car wash (there are fountains and one can bathe) and the one in which the luxury express stops, because the leftovers that the passengers throw through the window are tasty. Nobody knows better the trains schedule than these kids, who plan their days accordingly. Their dark, bright eyes scrutinize the coming and going of the convoys from a bridge that acts like a watchtower and with a view of the whole station. This is their world.
One of the press kiosks serves as a bank. It´s there where they deposit their daily profits just in case someone will try to steal them while they sleep. The owner of the kiosk charges them twenty percent for keeping the savings, and rounds up the business by selling them glue to inhale and make them grow from children to old men in a single night. The tougher kids get to control their own platform and acquire the right to recruit the little children that will arrive to the city (eloped, stranded) on the trains that stop in that platform. Is a never ending supply: orphans come to the station in New Delhi, sick old men whose medical condition makes them unprofitable for their family, little girls that were born unwanted, children who have escaped from a hellish home. When you are one of them and arrive in the big city, you can expect a 'welcome committee' that will assign you to a gang leader who will brief you on how to survive in this place. If you are a girl you will most likely end up working for a beggar mob or as a prostitute.
According to the United Nations, in New Delhi there are between 100,000 and 500,000 abandoned children, with no one to care for them. Across the country there are about two million. A whole army of losers who have just begun to play the game of life and that searches in the wastebaskets, garbage dumps and railroad tracks for the remains of their lost childhood. Surprisingly, these are not officially 'poor' children. Picking up trash and begging can make more than a dollar a day, and according to the World Bank this is enough to not be included among the more than 300 million ‘official’ poor of this country.
The Salaam Baalak Trust Foundation, founded by film director Mira Nair (The Monsoon Wedding), launched the organization for which Shekhar works as a guide. Its goal is that the more people better, both Indians and foreigners, know about the living conditions of these creatures. With the profit of these 'poverty tours', and contributions of volunteers and sponsors, they have been able to help thousands of children that will, at least, have some kind of childhood. More than 2,000 have been enrolled - four of them have even gone to university - about 1,000 have lived in a shelter of the organization, a few have been able to have surgery for their diseases and almost a hundred receive the medicines they need to fight AIDS. In the shelter, there are also Bollywood movies projections that allow you to forget bad luck for a few hours.
Shekhar dismisses the group of this morning and says that "at first it felt awkward to be a guide of my own house", but now he enjoys it and would only change this work to become a film actor, his passion. He also says that is studying to fulfill that dream and he smiles happy when some tourist praises his impeccable English.
Any tourist or traveler who wants to complete their Indian experience spending a couple of hours with the children of the station will take back home an unforgettable memory. And he will have contributed to buying a back-to-childhood ticket for these lost children.
Shekhar shows tourists the place where he was victim of many assaults when he was a child, not many years ago. Now Shekhar works as a tourist guide, but instead of visiting the monuments of New Delhi, his tour includes the places where poor children live in the New Delhi Train Station. It is what they call 'poorism': tourism of poverty.
The tour starts at one of the platforms. Hundreds of children have made their homes in booths, kiosks and under the stairs of this huge station that transforms every night. As the shadows fall, is open season for hunting and the weaker, more vulnerable fall prey of abuses, beatings and extortions by the police or drunkards. Previously there were also hobo gangs who lived in the station, but the more numerous and better organized children's bands threw them out of 'their' territory.
According to Shekhar, the most coveted hideouts are the ones that offer a better protection from surprise attacks. Like a tin metal roof that covers the electric panels: “the lathi (long sticks) that the policemen carry do not get up there.”
The two most disputed railroads are the car wash (there are fountains and one can bathe) and the one in which the luxury express stops, because the leftovers that the passengers throw through the window are tasty. Nobody knows better the trains schedule than these kids, who plan their days accordingly. Their dark, bright eyes scrutinize the coming and going of the convoys from a bridge that acts like a watchtower and with a view of the whole station. This is their world.
One of the press kiosks serves as a bank. It´s there where they deposit their daily profits just in case someone will try to steal them while they sleep. The owner of the kiosk charges them twenty percent for keeping the savings, and rounds up the business by selling them glue to inhale and make them grow from children to old men in a single night. The tougher kids get to control their own platform and acquire the right to recruit the little children that will arrive to the city (eloped, stranded) on the trains that stop in that platform. Is a never ending supply: orphans come to the station in New Delhi, sick old men whose medical condition makes them unprofitable for their family, little girls that were born unwanted, children who have escaped from a hellish home. When you are one of them and arrive in the big city, you can expect a 'welcome committee' that will assign you to a gang leader who will brief you on how to survive in this place. If you are a girl you will most likely end up working for a beggar mob or as a prostitute.
According to the United Nations, in New Delhi there are between 100,000 and 500,000 abandoned children, with no one to care for them. Across the country there are about two million. A whole army of losers who have just begun to play the game of life and that searches in the wastebaskets, garbage dumps and railroad tracks for the remains of their lost childhood. Surprisingly, these are not officially 'poor' children. Picking up trash and begging can make more than a dollar a day, and according to the World Bank this is enough to not be included among the more than 300 million ‘official’ poor of this country.
The Salaam Baalak Trust Foundation, founded by film director Mira Nair (The Monsoon Wedding), launched the organization for which Shekhar works as a guide. Its goal is that the more people better, both Indians and foreigners, know about the living conditions of these creatures. With the profit of these 'poverty tours', and contributions of volunteers and sponsors, they have been able to help thousands of children that will, at least, have some kind of childhood. More than 2,000 have been enrolled - four of them have even gone to university - about 1,000 have lived in a shelter of the organization, a few have been able to have surgery for their diseases and almost a hundred receive the medicines they need to fight AIDS. In the shelter, there are also Bollywood movies projections that allow you to forget bad luck for a few hours.
Shekhar dismisses the group of this morning and says that "at first it felt awkward to be a guide of my own house", but now he enjoys it and would only change this work to become a film actor, his passion. He also says that is studying to fulfill that dream and he smiles happy when some tourist praises his impeccable English.
Any tourist or traveler who wants to complete their Indian experience spending a couple of hours with the children of the station will take back home an unforgettable memory. And he will have contributed to buying a back-to-childhood ticket for these lost children.
