As the day dawns, 19-year-old Rajpal (name changed on request) hops into a train at Nizamuddin station, and sells paper, soap, locks and chains. He makes reasonable money. He often shifts base to Old and New Delhi railway stations and travels up to Mathura.
He moves in a group of eight, with friends aged from seven to 20. Some of these boys have families living on platforms for years. Small children pick up empty bottles from scrap and sell it to the scrap dealer. Whatever little they get, they give to their parents. Some boys attend an evening school and play “bat-ball” provided by an NGO. Some children don’t have parents here, so they join big boys like Rajpal and sell odd stuff at the station.
Most boys like Rajpal have run away from home. They live on the platform, use train toilets to relieve themselves, bathe and wash their clothes where trains are washed, eat at cheap hotels nearby and “party at night”.
They celebrate by consuming drugs – inexpensive ones but a “sasta jugaad” (a cheap alternative) as they say. Reveals Rajpal: “Most boys sniff tyre or rubber solution which they get from the puncture repair guys outside the station. They rub some solution on the children’s shirt for a rupee or two. It emanates the scent throughout the day. They keep on sniffing it. By night, they are tired enough and it puts them to sleep.”
Among them is eight-year-old Somu (name changed on request) who ran away from his home in Bihar a year ago. He says: “I am happy the way I am. I have so much freedom here. No school, no parents’ scoldings, or the responsibility to manage younger brothers and sisters the whole day, no drunk father to beat me or my mother everyday. I earn my money, and get a sound sleep.”
Somu doesn’t know that he gets sound sleep because he sniffs cheap intoxicants. Rajpal says: “Somu didn’t want to take it initially. He even puked for the first time but ‘yahan par peene ka pressure bahut rehta hai’ (the pressure from the peer group is intense), so he gave in.”
Rajpal doesn’t sniff the local eraser spirit or the tyre fixer solution, but smokes and chews gutkha. He has a flashy phone and an Aadhar card too which he got made by living with a relative at Loni and as a result he got a mobile SIM easily. He also admits to occasionally using the “SIM card which people throw on the platform”.
Rajpal ran away from home in Lucknow nine years ago as his father “would beat me up every day”. He called up his parents four years after he came to Delhi. “Initially they searched for me and then they gave up. In Delhi, I started living with my paternal uncle. I used to give them some money but perhaps that was not sufficient for them. One day, they made me drink acid (tezaab). I fell terribly ill and ran away from there.” he recalls.
Slowly, he is understanding that his lifestyle offers a bleak future. He gets “fed up with star wale police” personnel who grab his hard earned money and hit him when he refuses to give it. “ Jitne zyada star, utna zyada paisa dena padhta hai, na do to maar padti hai (More the number of stars on their shoulders, more the money we have to shell out, else they beat us up),” he says.
Though he loves his freedom and “Rs.10,000 to 15,000” he earns a month, he realises that it is an aimless life he is leading. “I am Class V pass. If someone offers me a decent job, I would like to live a life like ‘bada log’ (rich people),” he concludes.
