Corona Blog 25.09.2020

Children of the Indian Railway

By Sabriye Tenberken

Every now and then Sanoj visits the kanthari campus to get to know the new kantharis. Two years ago, he took my then 80-year-old mother for a motorbike tour through Kerala. It was just towards the end of the second monsoon. It had been raining all day and when they weren’t back late in the evening, Paul and I began to worry. At around two o’clock at night the gate of our courtyard opened with a loud squeaking sound and my mother showed up. She was thrilled. Sanoj had shown her his native place and together with his relatives, they went through the mountains and villages singing Christmas carols. ‘What an adventure it was’.

Sanoj, a 2014 kanthari graduate is a born adventurer. Through his desire to travel, he got to know India. He took the train to remote areas and encountered a phenomenon that he did not know about: Railway-Children. You can see them, especially in the north of India on the platforms of the larger train-stations. They survive by begging and collecting food scraps from waste buckets. They are often addicted to drugs or alcohol from a young age onward. Many of the children have run away from home. They are fleeing abuse and poverty. Some live together with their parents in train stations. These however are parents who are still children themselves.

Sanoj studied social sciences and after his studies had the opportunity to supervise different street children projects as project coordinator at the St Thomas Social Service Society. One day he observed a depressing event that affected his life: on a platform he discovered one of the railway children. It was a boy who had uncontrollable jerking movements of his arms and legs. Sanoj immediately realized that the boy was having an epileptic seizure. “This scene has reminded me of my own childhood. I have suffered greatly from epilepsy. When I think about it, I see pictures of hospital rooms, I vividly smell disinfectant substances, but I also remember the love and care of my family and friends. Medical treatment combined with human warmth, that had made me healthy again. And I could only imagine how lonely this boy had to feel during this seizure. That was my pinching point: I wanted to dedicate my life to the fate of Railway Children.”

Recently, Sanoj and his work, but especially the devotion to the abandoned children, was honored on the rethink development platform ‘think it again’. I do not want to take away too much… The article is important, especially as it describes Sanoj’s wish to live in the stations just like the children. I remember how, not long after he graduated from kanthari, he called me and told me about this experience. How he stayed with the children and youth under staircases and in niches, in dust and dirt. He drank and ate the same food that was scrawled from the bins. And then he became ill, so ill that he had to prematurely forfeit his personal experiment. “I’m just not as strong as these children”, He said on the phone. He sounded sad. But he didn’t give up. He founded Child in Rail and is working hard to transform his life’s dream into reality. Read more about Sanoj and his work with Railway-Children in the following article:
http://www.thinkitagain.com/single-post/2020/09/10/Plight-of-children-in-railway-stations