An uncertain future on the beach
“Teacher!” or “I want to become a doctor,” or I want to become a software engineer,” are the usual answers when children are asked what they want to be. The most imaginative answer could be, “I want to become a circus acrobat.”
But for 15-year-old Janaki, her dream is very special. “If I become rich and have more money, I would build a big bus stand close to where we live so that we need not travel long distance to go from place to place, but get on to the bus from here itself.”
Janaki’s family lives along the pavement of a busy road in Chennai city, right opposite the Marina Beach, a sandy beach along the Bay of Bengal said to be the longest in Asia and second longest in the world. They have no roof over their head and have nothing more than few vessels and clothes.
They belong to a nomadic community of gypsies called “Narikurava”. A majority of these people are still moving around the countryside and remain below the poverty line, with hardly any outside support. Most of their children do not get access to education due to the nomadic life led by their parents. They mostly depend on their handmade products such as beads, garlands, needles and chains. Some of them are expert tattoo artists. City pavements are the only homes they know.
“I was born here in Chennai and so was my sister Roja,” says this chirpy, very talkative teenager as she sits with us on the sands of the Marina beach while her friends run around playing games, throwing sand at each other. Her 12-year-old sister Roja is an inseparable shadow, hanging onto every word she says, adding or correcting the information she gives, sometimes breaking into a fight in her own dialect.
She describes her home as the sidewalk on the road leading to a train station close to the beach, her bed is a piece of plastic she shares with her sister and friends. Her cupboard is a small box holding all the clothes she has. “I have to keep it very carefully,” she says continuing to talk about her day.
Janaki has to wake up at the crack of dawn, around 6 am. She does not have the luxury of ‘sleeping in’ because her bed and home will soon be thronging with early morning commuters trying to get to work. Quickly folding her bed (a sheet of plastic), she gulps the tea that her father brings her from the nearby shop and gets ready for her day.
The mobile lifestyle of the ‘Narikuravas’ means that they do not have stoves or vessels to cook with. All food has to be purchased from shops or begged for. Warmed by the team Janaki runs to fetch water for the family to drink from a nearby pump.
Then the children go out for gathering breakfast. They go house to house in the neighbourhood, begging for food leftover from the previous night. “We go to the houses close by and they give us the left over food in a plastic bag. It took almost an hour yesterday and around 8. 30 am I was back to my parents,” says Janaki. Then the whole family sets out for ‘work’.
While her parents move around the city trying to sell the trinkets and wares they have made, Janaki and her friends cross the busy main road, nimbly dodging traffic to the hot sands of the beach. For the rest of the day Janaki would beg for money among the people who travel along the road or come to the beach.
“I made quite a bit of money today, but we didn’t have any lunch. One of the visitors to the beach gave their lunch box to us and all of us shared that food,” says Janaki. Roja, her sister was quick to add that they also had a mango drink offered by another person in the beach. Seeing the condition of the children, who are dressed in ragged clothes and are walking barefoot on the hot sand, people are very generous. This becomes a source of income for the family.
Usually, Janaki makes a little more money than the other kids. “I will carry a monkey with me and perform tricks. So when people pause to look at the monkey I will get money from them.” The ‘Narikuravas’ have over the years learned to catch and train common monkeys to do tricks and earn a small amount of money.
“We walked along the beach, begging, performing tricks with the monkey and playing around till we reached the lighthouse,” says Janaki. The lighthouse is a Chennai beach landmark about one and a half kilometers from where Janaki stays. The sand around the lighthouse is where Janaki and all other children from here family group spend a lot of time playing. “We all took bath near the water pump there and played for a long time, singing and playing hide and seek and also play with the monkey. Then we took a bus and came back to our place,” says Janaki.
As the beach gets busier with more people in the evening, Janaki and her friends waste no time. “Yesterday I made more than Rs. 50/-, “ says Janaki. She ran with it and and gave Rs. 50/- from the money to a shopkeeper nearby to safe. This is common practice among the children to leave money with shopkeepers for safekeeping as it may get stolen when they sleep on the street.
“But, we didn’t have anything to eat for dinner. The food I had collected in the morning had gone stale,” says Janaki. So she went back to the shopkeeper to get the money and gave it to her father who bought ‘dosa’ and fish from a nearby shop and the family had dinner.
“Around 8.30 in the night my friends and I spread the plastic sheets and we covered ourselves up and had fun scaring each other before we went to sleep,” says Janaki.
Janaki and friends do not think about school at all in their full day. When we asked her if she had ever been to school she and Roja launched into funny stories about their experience with school. “We went to a residential school where we were taught ‘ABC’ and maths,” remembers Janaki.
Then her eyes sparkle as she remembers how they enjoyed learning the alphabet and numbers “till the teacher started writing big numbers,” as they both break into concerted laughter. “We told the teacher not to write big numbers because her hands would pain,” says Janaki as her sister shakes her head vigourously, grinning all the time. “We all cried because we wanted to be in the same class,” says Janaki. But they left this school when the family moved again.
The fun and laughter of the children cover up some of the grave challenges they face in their lives on the street. The lack of access to education leaves them with no future prospects. Sleeping on the streets makes the children, especially girls vulnerable to sexual abuse. “It breaks our heart to hear children talk to us about being sexually abused,” says Seetha, a volunteer with a church that works with the children daily, teaching them cleanliness, tries to educate them and give them nutritious food. These are also the children that get trafficked for child labour or sex work.
For Janaki, the simple pleasures of life are to be able to eat well, play with friends and her pets and run around on the beach. And about her future, all she needs is a bus stand next to where she lives so that she can keep moving, towards an uncertain future.
