A commemorative volume documents the stellar work done by the Salaam Baalak Trust in rehabilitating street children

The title of the book and the quotes used in it are from Rabindranath Tagore’s 1928 poem Fireflies.
They reflect the spirit of the Trust and the life of the children heralding a new dawn. Founder trustees, Sanjoy Roy and Praveen Nair, Mira’s mother, had a vision of helping these children’s dreams come true. They were simple dreams of “warmth at night; a hot cooked meal; someone to dress a wound and hold a hand when it hurts”. The more challenging ones were providing them with education, jobs, four walls of a home and a future. At 18 the children were adults and had to be ready to face the world though there was always the Trust to turn to when faced with problems in the big wide world!

The text by Sujata Raghavan is evocative and extremely readable. She tells you stories of their lives, their journey to India’s Capital, life on a railway station, getting into drugs, being bullied, finding shelter in the homes of SBT, finding people who empathise with them and give direction to their lives. Not everyone is good at academics so after education, which is a must for all SBT kids, they find their zest for life and a living in arts, drama, films, music, sports and photography. Many of them have returned to serve their alma mater!

Many of the SBT children have excelled in the arts. Chhota Salim starred in the Oscar-nominated short film, Little Terrorist (2004), Om Singh was the main protagonist in Gali Guleiyan (2017), Pankaj starred in the musical, Zangoora at Kingdom of Dreams, Sajda has just finished shooting for a major new film. Vicky Roy, whose photographs along with those of Pankaj, bring alive this book, was one of the four photographers selected by the Maybach Foundation to record the rebuilding of the World Trade Center in New York in 2008. Haran is an established commercial and art photographer.

The book tells you about the amazing staff that laid the foundations of this unique NGO– its growth, of selfless love, of service! Also extremely well documented is the role of the donors and the corporate sector and how funds are raised. The role of the policemen who pick up the children and bring them to Salaam Baalak is brought out as is the role of the Child Welfare Committees before which the child is presented before being moved into a home. Restoring a child to its family can be problematic, even in cases where the child, tired of life on the streets, wants to go home.
There is the amazing story of 10-year-old Saleem of Bijnor who had got into a fight in his school and fearing repercussions decided to hide for a while in one of the trucks near a dal mill and fell asleep. When the truck stopped it was near Agra and he knew he was lost and his parents would not know where to look for him. It was the temple in all these drawings that got the shelter coordinator to gently probe about his home. Saleem finally narrates his story and how there was a temple and dal mills near his home that enables the coordinator to reach him home. Sheets of paper, crayons and pencils had given the child the space to express himself— reveal something that had been dormant in him for years! Quite clearly there are different ways to reach a child.

Equally insightful is the evolution of the mental health programme at SBT. Bad behaviour in children is not taken at face value but the pattern observed, the cause delved into and the conditions analysed.
This is a must read book for NGOs working with children, those trying to raise funds and those looking for dedicated workers who can build novel institutions!

Usha Rai is a veteran journalist