TN to Maharashtra to Punjab

I first saw the boy when lunching at the hotel some days back. On enquiry, I found out that he was from South India and had come to Bombay for work. Curious to know more about such an itinerant, I fixed an appointment with Mr. Seth the hotel owner, to find out whether we (me and the social service organization that I volunteer for) could help him out in any way.

Claustrophobia engulfed me as soon as I sat in that dingy 4-table hotel in Andheri. Mr. Seth made me comfortable and I wasted little time in discussing the boy. “Chai,” Mr. Seth called out. Fourteen year old Ramu kept a glass of tea before me. As he turned to leave, I caught hold of his wrist and said ‘Wait.”

Though short in height, he had a surprisingly good physique for boy just into his teens. ‘These people are here to provide you education and they want to know more about you. Tell them about your past and why you came here,’ Mr. Seth explained my purpose. With a pleasant smile, Ramu started narrating his tale and I listened with rapt attention.

Raghu came to Bombay two years back when his parents decided to discontinue his studies for want of money. His father is a farmer and that fateful year the crops failed badly, thanks to the poor rains. This forced him to send his son to work. With three children, he had no other option but to send the eldest into the wilderness of Bombay to shield his other two children from illiteracy. Ramu lived with an uncle in Bombay.

Ramu was working in a hotel when another uncle of his, Singaram, approached him. Singaram is a contract engineer in Punjab and works in a big factory. Due to reasons of a slight build, Singaram declined Ramu the job. Since Ramu had come to know that the job in Punjab would involve a lot of physical effort, he started working out in the gym everyday and is still awaiting the day that he would attain sufficient build to work in the factory along with his uncle.

The most difficult part of his work in the hotel is the long working hours and the six-day week. The boy travels 30 minutes by foot to and fro between his home and the hotel and works between eight in the morning and nine in the night. Waking up early mornings and going to a gym in the nearby playground has become a norm for the little fellow. This leaves Ramu with only six hours of sleep.

He lives an uncertain life in the middle of well to do cell phones toting teen aged children racing about in cars. At an age when most of us would not even have ventured out of our cities, leave alone states (except maybe on excursions), the thought of leading such a nomadic life – Tamil Nadu to Maharashtra to Punjab – seems scary.

‘I’ll manage. Just as I managed to learn Hindi here,’ he says with a smile that spills forth his innocence. With a tough life ahead of him, he has learnt to live life the tough way. Luckily for him, he has not yet taken to smoking or drinking as have children of his age in similar situations.

‘I have passed sixth standard,’ was the proud answer when I asked him about his studies though one could see sorrow in his eyes. He exuberantly nodded his head when presented with the chance to start studying again.

‘Try!. Teach him something for a month and see if he is really interested. For some, formal education will never be their cup of tea. Maybe his interests lie somewhere else. We have to find out what interests him and make him pursue that, maybe a welding profession or one as a car mechanic,’ Mr. Seth voiced his opinions.

We started teaching him mathematics and despite knowing only addition, he is a quick learner. Thought just two days into our classes, he has already shown the will and interest to continue learning and sometime in the near future, we plan of putting him in a night school.

There are such Ramu’s everywhere around us. Child labour of any form is nothing but pure injustice. Not only does it amount to exploitation, it also prevents the child from getting qualified for higher paying jobs, which invariably require at least a tenth standard passing certificate. The least we could do as responsible citizens of India is to speak out against this ugly practice of child labour and also try and educate such children by spending some of our time on them every week.

*All names changed for sake of privacy.

* The boy in the picture is NOT Ramu.