'Does a shack on a footpath count as home?'

All that the children at Kolkata's CINI Asha shelter want is a real home, discovers Sandip Roy

Some are runaways. Some are lost. Some have fled abuse and incest at home. They come from all over India. But when you ask them to draw something from memory, they usually draw the same thing.

"They always draw a house," says Shipra Bandopadhyay. She works at CINI Asha, which is the urban institute of the Child in Need Institute.

CINI was set up in 1974 by Dr S N Chaudhuri, a pediatrician who wanted to improve the lives of poor rural children and provide ante-natal and post-natal care for their mothers.

But in the early 1990s Dr Chaudhuri noticed children roaming around the platforms of Sealdah station in the heart of Kolkata. Some were children of the platform vendors, some runaways.

"He asked them what do you want to be and some said police, others said teacher or pilot," says Manidipa Ghosh, assistant director, CINI-Asha.

Dr Chaudhuri thought a drop-in center close to the station, where the children could pick up some non-formal education, might be useful.

"We slowly realised there were other needs," says Ghosh. "Recreation. Trauma counseling. Bathing facilities. A night shelter."

Ghosh's office is off a busy street in central Kolkata. Trams trundle past, bells clanking. Student election posters festoon a college up the street. Large chunks of the sidewalk are taken up by shanties, blue tarp roofs eking out a few square feet of living space.

Many of the children who come to CINI Asha come off these streets. Some come from Kolkata's suburbs. Some from small towns far away. Increasingly many are tribal children who show up not knowing any local language.

Ghosh says she doesn't want to give out numbers of how many children are homeless in Kolkata. Even the notion of homelessness varies from researcher to researcher.

"Does a polythene shack on a footpath count as a home," she asks.

Above Ghosh's office is CINI Asha's short stay home for girls who have been found on the streets. Homes for boys exist in different facilities. Short stay might mean overnight.

It can be as long as three months before the Child Welfare Committee decides whether they can be rehabilitated or placed in a home.

There's a chart on the wall with big cheerful flowers that outlines their day.
Brushing teeth: 6:45 am -- 7 am

Bathroom and dress: 7:15 am -- 8:15 am.

There are paintings on the blue walls of peacocks and princesses, rainbows and rocking horses. It looks like just another day care centre. Except the chart on the wall has neat columns marked Missing, Runaway, Abandoned at Shelter.

Two little girls are engrossed in a game of carom. One comes up shyly and grins. She tells me she is two. Bandopadhyay, who looks after the girls says she's actually around seven. She's been here two months, a missing child. If her family can't be found, she'll have to be placed in a home.

"I have a doll," the little girl tells me solemnly. "I like to play cooking-cooking. I make tea, with tea leaves and milk."

Her carom-mate comes out, impatient to get back to the game. An older girl keeps touching my elbow. "Brother, do you have a house? Take me with you," she says.

"They keep asking when they will go back home," says Bandyopadhyay. But home is a tricky concept for these children. Counselors have to find out why the children left in the first place.

Some were abandoned by parents. Some want to go to school, but the parents see no value in that. Some might say they want to go home, but when it comes time to go home they balk.

"Even if the parents want to bring them home, but the children don't want to go, we don't let them go," says Bandyapadhyay.

"Family reunification is about trust building. It can take months," says Ghosh.

She says some of the children have been so battered by abuse they do not want to trust any adults. CINI Asha counselors often find themselves playing mediator between the children and parents.

"We have to explain to them that this is their age to learn, not to work," she says. "We cannot get them all out. Some kid might be at the drop in shelter till 5, but then go and work for three or four hours."

But for Ghosh the first hurdle is building trust with the children. One of the ways they have done it is to give each child their own locker at the night shelter.

"They get to keep their own things -- a comb, some oil, soap, a towel. They have their own keys. And they get a sense that these are their own things," says Ghosh.

The goal might be mainstreaming these children, giving them a hand up the ladder, but Ghosh admits it can still be hit or miss. First generation learners, they often struggle at school without much help at home. Many drop out and don't want to go back to school even though CINI Asha has started coaching classes to help them. Some run away even after reunification. Some struggle with addictions they picked up on the street like sniffing glue.

"And the street has its own addiction," says Ghosh. "There is a freedom in living on the railway platform. That is undeniable."

CINI Asha tries to teach the chidlren how to live in a world that has a lot more rules and structure. They run home placement camps with yoga and meditation. At the girls' shelter, the little girls make their own beds, and take turns at cleaning the bathroom and wiping the floor after meals.

They get some training in arts and crafts, in vocational skills.

Ghosh says there are a lot of success stories. Many of the children who have shown up at the doors of CINI Asha now have steady jobs. Some work with computers. Some are happily married. Many come back as volunteers. 

But all that is much further down the road. For now, these children have to find their way back home. One little girl is getting ready to go back home. She smiles but will not talk, clutching the hands of one of the care providers at the center, staring at her shoes. She was a runaway, the woman tells me. She is heading home tonight. Hopefully her story will have a happy ending. 

The two little girls return to their game of carom. The others trail me around the room, watching from a distance, giggling. On the blue walls above their heads there are paintings of birds. They are flying towards some unknown horizon, perhaps a nest of their own. 

Sandip Roy is an editor and radio journalist with New America Media, currently based in Kolkata.