New Delhi: Amina sells bright balloons to the families eating and shopping at Delhi’s Connaught Place. When it’s time for a break, she slips into a quiet alley, away from the shiny showrooms. She lifts up her kurta and takes out a small tube hidden in her pyjamas. It’s a task since she’s eight months pregnant. Dabbing some of the liquid on a blue handkerchief, she inhales deeply. “What’s life without it?” she asks, her dry lips cracking into a smile
Amina, 18, does not want to talk about her pregnancy. A large scar on her abdomen is a reminder of the baby she lost at birth last year, but she doesn’t want to dwell on that either. The solution, which she calls “solshun”, to all her problems is in the tube of Omni, a vulcanising fluid that is often abused as an inhalant. Shivering slightly, she moves towards the lunch crowd with her balloons.
Back in the alley, Amina’s partner Zakir and his 16-year-old brother Asim also don’t have a care in the world as long as they are sniffing their hankies. “I can’t imagine life without it. It makes us forget pain, happiness, hunger, and thirst,” Asim says.
Shielding his red eyes from the bright February sun, his brown unkempt hair falling on his face, Asim suddenly plucks out a broken tooth. “It was bothering me,” he explains, untroubled by the blood flowing through the gaps in his teeth. “Life is good.”
Over several days past week, ThePrint met at least 20 children, some just 8-10 years old, who live on the streets of central Delhi and the Old Delhi and are addicted to inhalants and other drugs.
According to “very conservative” estimates in a 2021 report by NGO Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, there are at least 60,000 children living on the streets of Delhi. Drug abuse among such kids is a well-documented problem, although exact numbers are hard to come by due to the transient and undocumented nature of this population.
Back in 2017, though, a survey of Delhi’s street children, conducted jointly by the Delhi government and the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, AIIMS, found that over 7,900 street children were addicted to inhalants, which give a euphoric high but can also lead to hallucinations, organ damage, and death. It also found that over 9,000 children abused alcohol, 5,600 took cannabis, and over 1,200 consumed opioids, including heroin.
Social workers that ThePrint spoke to said substance abuse is rampant among street children, but it is nearly impossible to rehabilitate most of them. Very few seek help, often preferring chemical highs to the bleak reality of poverty, homelessness, abuse, and extreme deprivation.
They all have a story, a past, but it’s rarely a happy one. “We do have a house where our father and elder brother live with his wife, but it’s not a home. Ma ran away with another man when we were kids,” Zakir says.
For the ragtag family comprising Amina, Zakir, and Asim, one Rs 80 tube of Omni buys a day of precious oblivion. For others, opioids like smack, also known as black tar, do the trick, a ‘reward’ after a long day of begging or rag-picking.
But while the highs and hallucinations offer a temporary refuge from the traumas of their existence, once they embark on this path, there is a little hope of turning back.
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‘Will you want to stay in your senses?’
The scene at Delhi’s Old Yamuna Bridge area looks like a dystopian playground. Around 20-30 children, ranging in age from 8 to 17, are gathered near a temple. They are flocking around Nakul, 21, in the hope he’ll share some smack with them.
Nakul himself has been on drugs since he was about 12 years old, he says. He’s been in and out of de-addiction centres and has broken out of shelter homes at least four times, he claims. “It gives you a heavenly feeling,” he shrugs.
One of the children in this group is 10-year-old Rohit. His parents died when he was a toddler and his uncle brought him from Uttar Pradesh to Delhi when he was five years old, he says.
Rohit is now the sole breadwinner. He begs and also charges Rs 10-20 from devotees at the temple for looking after their shoes. “My uncle doesn’t do any work, so I have to feed us both,” he says.
Sitting nearby, with her own little gang, is 13-year-old Kiran. “These boys do smack,” she says rather virtuously. “The grown-ups buy it from the market, and then these boys pay them with whatever they get begging.”
Kiran insists she stays away from drugs, but Nakul immediately contradicts her. “She is lying! She does smack with the boys,” he says. The two soon start yelling at each other, both equally fluent in choice expletives.
Nearby, an unbothered 13-year-old Rahul settles down for his noon nap. He’s already had his dose. Another boy Salman, aged about 11, has drooping eyes and stained teeth, but claims he only has gutka and quickly leaves the spot. “He is scared that the NGO will take him away,” Kiran says.
Suddenly, a woman appears. She seems to be in her 40s, and is dressed in a shiny black Patiala suit with a heavy necklace to match. She commands the children to disperse. Most of them are too dazed to do so, but their smiles fade and they stand in line.
Nakul whispers that her name is Muskan and that she “controls the area”.
When asked if the kids do drugs here, she answers impatiently: “What else will they do? How will they do jobs like begging and rag-picking without being high? You tell me, will you be able to survive this life, clean other people’s shit, and still want to stay in your senses?”
It’s obvious she doesn’t want people asking too many questions. Her role among the children is not clear, but almost maternally, she reprimands an older drug addict for pulling Kiran’s hair.
A few metres away is a park, with children laughing on swings and see-saws. Look more closely, though, and there are other children too, with vacant eyes and grimy hands. Sitting in one of the green paths is Jaggi, who seems to be in his mid-teens. He can barely hold his head up. He tries to answer a question but his voice fades away mid-sentence, and his reddened eyes fix on the sky.
Escaping ‘rescue’
Most of the young addicts that ThePrint spoke were more interested in their high than a conversation. The only thing that really grabbed their attention was any mention of an NGO or shelter. For most, it was a cue to quickly leave the spot.
This antipathy to NGOs is quite common, says Wasif Khan, who looks after a shelter home under the Salaam Baalak Trust, an NGO that works for street children.
“They’ve been told that NGOs are like prisons by the local kingpins who use them for rag picking, peddling drugs, and odd jobs,” Khan explains.
The government-mandated procedure for getting kids off the streets has several steps.
When an NGO identifies a child as an addict and homeless, he or she is taken to the nearest Child Care Institution (CCI). This, however, can be done only after identifying and informing their guardians. The entire medical history of the child has to be traced to find out if he or she has been a victim of sexual assault. Those above 10 and severely addicted are admitted to a de-addiction centre after a medical test.
If the child is an orphan or if the whereabouts of the extended family aren’t known, the child is handed over to a Child Welfare Committee (CWC). In such cases, a general diary entry is made at the local police station.
However, for many children the experience of being ‘rescued’ is not a pleasant one.
Ashok Kumar, superintendent of a Salaam Baalak Trust child care home, acknowledges that being in such spaces feels alien and uncomfortable to many children who are used to life on the streets.
“The child is put into a routine and strict diet. They have to wake up on time, exercise, eat healthy, study, and play. Almost all children brought in from the streets want to run away. They jump walls and break out of the CCI,” Kumar says.
Even though missing complaints are filed in such cases, the local police usually do not expend much effort to retrieve them, Khan alleges. “This is apathy. No one actually wants to take the effort with them; society has already given up on them. There isn’t enough empathy and patience.”
This apathy, he adds, extends to parents or other guardians, who’d rather have the children earning money than staying at a shelter or de-addiction centre.
“De-addiction takes time. In most cases, after six months, the parents want to take back the kid. They should ideally keep the child in a shelter home after de-addiction but they don’t agree. We can’t force them. So when the child goes back to the same circle, he or she is bound to fall into the trap again. This keeps repeating itself,” Khan says.
Handling the child at de-addiction centres is also extremely tricky, at least for the first week to 10 days, says Nimesh Desai, former director of the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS).
“Stable recovery is already difficult in chemical addiction. It requires constant monitored follow-up. The other technical problem is solvent addiction, such as glue sniffing, where there is very little medical treatment to be offered. It includes mostly counselling.”
Desai points out that addiction is not a singular phenomenon, but also has social, psychological, and emotional dimensions. It also often co-occurs with other conditions brought about by “repetitive trauma”. In such instances, addiction is a symptom and unless underlying issues are treated, recovery is difficult.
Another component is behavioural problems that may even lead to run-ins with the law. It isn’t uncommon for street addicts to resort to crimes like theft or chain-snatching to fund their habit.
“Constant undeterred substance abuse mostly leads to conduct disorder and anti-social behaviour,” Desai explains.
Khan says there are exceptions to the rule, when kids themselves come forward and say that they are done with drugs and want to get admitted in a de-addiction centre. “These are success stories, but they are rare,” he adds.
Back in Connaught Place, a tired Amina sits on the sidewalk after a long day. But when asked if she’s willing to go to a shelter home, she is angry. She quickly packs up her balloons and gets ready to leave. “I’ll go crazy if I stop inhaling (Omni),” she concedes.
(All names of street-dwellers have been changed)
(Edited By Asavari Singh)
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