Chennai: Talking about her family isn’t easy for 15-year-old S. Sneha. Hers is a broken family. Left to fend for herself and her younger brother, after her parents split following a quarrel, she dropped out of Class X and started working in a company producing beds at Mannady, near where she lives.
“I earn about Rs 200 a day. Work is tough because the place is dusty and loose cotton strands fly around. I struggle for breath after inhaling it but I have no choice. I need the money to educate my brother,” she said. While Sneha is as demure as one can be, the same cannot be said of B. Hepsiba (16), her overtly chatty teammate. Part of a quartet, which includes S. Silambarasan (20) and C. Ashok (19), these youngsters represented Team India at Slum Children Athletics Meet in Brazil and bagged one gold, a silver and three bronze medals to go with the friends they made from nine other participant countries.
Two things bind them in common. They are all offspring of pavement dwellers. They are also ‘Theri’ fans of actor ‘Ilaya Thalapathy’ Vijay. Hepsiba and Silambarasan know each other well having grown up together at the Greater Chennai Corporation’s Kannappar Thidal night shelter. “I was named by T. Rajendar (TR) when he visited our area during campaigning in 1996,” said Silambarasan, breaking into a smile. He pursues law degree from Chengalpattu Government Law College.
Hepsiba, who is a Class XI student at Chennai girls higher secondary school at Rotler street, is the most educated in her family that includes her flower-vending mother and three elder sisters. The team was accompanied by E. Usha (18), a maths degree student and a third generation pavement dweller. Usha, who had an opportunity to speak on behalf of her country about Slum Dwellers’ Rights at the General Assembly before the Athletics Meet, had to even skip her elder sister’s wedding to be at Rio de Janeiro. “Though my family was not too happy, I went because I had an opportunity to represent slum dwellers in India and not just Perambur Barracks Road (her home),” she noted.
But none are like Ashok, who ran away as an eight-year-old from his Dharmapuri home unable to take in the torment an alcoholic father wreaked on his mother. “I just took a train and landed in Central station. I have never regretted my decision,” he said. But whether he was sleeping on pavements or working to make ends meet in a newspaper stall at Central, only one thing affected Ashok, or his friends. Lack of identity.
An example of this human rights violation was when Hepsiba was nearly prevented from flying to Brazil by the authorities because the policeman tasked with passport verification misread her address. “He threatened to send my application back for no fault of mine,” said Hepsiba. But for the intervention of former DGP Walter Davaram, she would not have been on the flight, added Singh.
For all of them, except Ashok, Brazil, and indeed flying in an airplane, was a first. Ashok had been to Brazil before as part of the Indian slum kids football team to play at the World Cup in 2014. “We visited the Sugarloaf mountain, trained on the Copacabana Beach, tried our hands at Capoeira, played the Samba drum, stayed in a hotel and ate food which we are not used to,” said Hepsiba.
Ask what they disliked about Brazil and Sneha is quick to answer. “I found out that their way of greeting someone was to hug. I have only known to shake hands,” she said. “There was also the small problem of using European toilets,” added Silambarasan, with a mischievous smile, before signing off.
