Living along the pavements - a day in Vijay's life
Fourteen-year-old Vijay’s family lives along the pavement of Stringers Street right behind the Veterinary College Hostel Campus in Chennai. The houses are not more than 10x12 sq.ft. in dimension. Plastic sheets make the roof of the house and the walls are generally mud and bits of discarded advertisement hoardings.
Vijay along with his mother and elder brother shares his sister’s house. Pavement dwelling units doesn’t have any basic facility. Vijay’s house doesn’t have a bathroom or running water or kitchen. So Vijay has to use the streets to get ready for the school. “I get up at 7 30 in the morning, get ready to go to school. I generally don’t have my breakfast,” says Vijay.
The families that live along the pavements rarely cook, as their housing condition is not conducive for cooking. Mostly they buy food and if at all they cook, it will be in the evening. They also are daily wage earners that they depend on the money they earn in a day to meet with the household expenditure.
Vijay takes Rs. 5 from his mother every morning, buys his tea and food and packs it for lunch at school. “Every day I buy idly and sambar from Saina akka’s tiffin stall and have it for lunch”
“At around 8.30 I quickly get hold of all my friends and we walk to school. It takes just 10 minutes for us to reach the school,” says Vijay.
Vijay is in grade VI in St. Mark’s Middle School. His school is a two-storey building. “My classes start from 9 am and finishes at 4 pm. We don’t have a play ground in school. Still, I love playing in the school. We run around during break time chasing friends,” says Vijay.
Vijay studies Language (English and Tamil), Mathematics, Science and Social Science in School but likes Tamil and Science a lot. “I want to become an Engineer after I finish school,” adds Vijay.
The best part of Vijay’s day is the time he spends with his friends in the evening. Around 40 children live in this street and World Vision has set up a children’s club for them. One of the houses in the row of huts along the pavements is the centre where children get together to play and learn. This space has indoor games, bats, racquets, footballs and information on child rights too.
“I play cricket with my friends. I love batting. The space we have here is narrow (the road in front of his house), so I can’t hit sixes. I will have to be really fast to get singles. I also play marbles,” says Vijay. “I like to draw sketches of cartoons like Dora, Mickey Mouse etc.”
Vijay and friends gather in front of their houses and spend a lot of time. “My friends and I chat a lot, about what happens around us, about girls, movies. Its lot of fun.”
“We get together in the centre around 6 in the evening and do our home work and get help from Ragupathy anna (a volunteer from World Vision). We spend more than an hour learning.”
Most children from this community drop out from school and start to work and supplement their family income. Fortunately, Vijay continues his schooling but he also makes money doing odd jobs in the locality during the late evening hours. “Two of my friends and I fill water in huge containers for an office close by. We pump water in pots and to fill four large containers we would need to take at least 32 pots of water. I would make Rs. 30 to 50 for this work and give that to my mother,” says Vijay.
“I have my dinner in my sister’s house and sleep there inside the house. My brother would sleep outside the house and my mother sleeps in the pavement in the other side of the road,” says Vijay.
Besides all the fun that Vijay has with his friends, the challenges of living in the streets remain. Families like Vijay’s don’t know how long they would continue to live there. They are exposed to changes in the weather, they lack every basic facility needed for a living and they also face the risk of eviction any day. But all of them keep their hope alive in search of a better life.
