Voice of Slum - Part 1

There is a saying “It takes only one voice at the right pitch, to start an avalanche”.

Hers is a story about a girl from the slums who herself held a pencil at the age of 10 and now she is reshaping the life of many children who dare to dream and desire to fulfil them. This story must be told to everyone and this is a voice that must resonate ,so that children in the streets are taken care and are equipped to lead their lives better. It’s also Story of a past filled with suffering, a Present full of hope and endurance, and a Future that promises to be brighter than ever before.

I am talking about Chandni Khan who was born in the slums of Noida, a place where several kids are born and die in oblivion. But she refused to lay back and make her peace with her grim destiny as she climbed out of the darkness and now she is extending her hands to pull others out of the same misery too. This girl started working from a very young age. “From the age of five, I used to travel along with my father to perform street magic shows, dance and play with snakes, even late at night. I also picked up rags during that time,” she recalls.

What worse can happen after this? An accident that further deteriorated her when her father passed away and the onus of the earning for the family fell upon her shoulders and she started working under someone who paid her a meager wage of Rs. 30 per day. The struggle didn’t stopped here, “At the age of seven, I had shifted to rag picking. Verbal abuses and dog bites became a part of my daily routine and at the end, I ended up in jail over false accusations of stealing. I kept changing my job, from selling flowers to corn, I was doing it all. During one of these monotonous days, I got lucky and met a few NGO volunteers who were educating children from the slums. It was then I discovered my purpose and enrolled myself with Badhte Kadam,” she says.

To be continued..

-Sunidhi

Comments

The First Step in right direction

It is rightly said, if you want to know the real side of a country don’t look at their urban or developed area but have a look at their slums, that’s where the reality lies. A slum shows the true picture of every country. In India, according to census 2011, nearly 17% of the urban households live in slums, which was around 23.5% in 2001. Although the percentage has gone down but the number of households living in slums have gone up from 10.5 million in 2001 to 13.75 million in 2011. Let’s have a look at the reasons for growing slums in India. First and foremost being the forever growing population of the country. India is the second most populated country in the world and soon it is going to overtake china. The problem with growing population is the lack of equally growing employment opportunity. People in search of better earning opportunity move towards the bigger cities and towns and are trapped there with low earnings and high living costs and the lack of avai...

Dharavi Diaries

I was 16 when I joined an NGO that gave education to underprivileged students. My very first day was in Dharavi - Mumbai. As my taxi went through the road deeper and inside the lanes of Dharavi, I could feel the Mumbai which is shown in movies and which is written in books is gone far away. The place I was in was full of life. It looked like the scene where ants are working together in places everywhere. Every house had ladders and life built upon life, families lived upon families. I was directed to a room where I was supposed to teach the kids. I passed door after door. Doors that were open wide. Houses had women working on sewing machines, creaking table fans, swings made of saree for just born kids, piles of vessels filled with water and small photographs on the walls with garland on them. In the rooms of 10*10 square feet, people created homes. The room I entered had no roof. Walls were broken. It had a black board and a chair. One hour went by, nobody showed up. Just when I was...

Ashman Foundation

It's Chandni 's first time at KFC and she is positively happy about it. As she steps in, she loses some of the inferiority she felt before, when she used to believe that she can never enter a KFC. But today, she feels included and equal to all in the society. A long life, suppressed in poverty and feelings of inferiority can lead children to the concept of "Never dream for better skies". Life in poverty can be depressing and it is almost true. Ashman foundation is a charitable trust working wholeheartedly towards empowering slum children and women from the society so that they can live with pride and respect. Chandni 's story is not just a single case, but a lot of children out there in the society face such inferiority complexes and are unable to dream for a better life. Ashman foundation reaches out to such sufferers and treats them the way they want to be treated and helps them to dream bigger and achieve bigger. A country like India requires hundreds of Ashma...

The Other India

Search This Blog