Son of a sex worker, born into the alleys of Sonagach, Bijon does not, will not have a childhood.

Kolkata
Six-year-old Ashish wakes up to the persistent beeps of an alarm clock. As his mother prepares to get out of bed, he hugs her tighter. Rupali pleads with her son, “Let me get up, I have to heat your bath water.” Ashish turns to cuddle his six-month-old sister, but soon his father nudges him. “If you sleep anymore, you’ll miss the rickshaw.”

Reluctantly, Ashish gets up and staggers into the kitchen where Rupali warms his milk. Meanwhile, her husband, Manas, a clerk in a private company, goes back to bed to make up for the extra hours he put in at office the previous day for “overtime”.

“Home” to this family is a modest 200 square foot one-room apartment. A multipurpose room, a minuscule kitchen and a tiny verandah comprise their world. The furniture is sparse and utilitarian: a bed that accommodates the couple and the children, a table and folding chairs that multitask as Ashish’s study and Manas’ work table-cum dining space-cum-guest seatng and a small portable TV - their most prized possession.

Life is frugal. The couple dream of giving their children a decent education and a stable home. Money is scarce, but this paucity is compensated amply by the couple’s love for their children. A few sacrifices here and there - passing over a comfortable auto ride to office, new shoes or a new sari - enable them to pay for Ashish’s tuition for admission to a missionary school. Not an uncommon kind of home.

Two lanes away, in a house at Sonagachi.

Ashish’s first cousin Bijon lives in a home that’s unfamiliar to most. A house smaller than the one described a while ago - both in size and dreams. Though Bijon’s and Ashish’s mothers are sisters, the cousins have never met. Ashish has neve heard of Bijon. Rupali and her family make sure her sister Sumita is never mentioned in the house. As far as they’re concerned, ever since she ran away with a Muslim taxi driver to a world of vice, she has been considered dead.

Unfortunately, Sumita’s running away didn’t lead her to riches. Financially, she is no better off than her sister. Yet their lifestyles bear no similarity. Here in her house, the atmosphere is completely different - one which breeds the likes of Bijon, eking out an existence in conditions not even fit for pigs. From a window across the narrow alley, I peep into a world that’s no different from the one in the room I’m presently in.

A thin beam of sunlight manages to sneak past the tattered curtains of the tiny 10 x 8 feet room and find its way to Bijon - all of nine years. Next to him is his baby sister, just over a year old. She has soiled her clothes and his, and her bottle of milk lies in the mess. On the other side sleeps his five-year-old sister, Anjoli. Bijon shares his “room” - the space under a rickety wooden cot, measuring barely three feet by five - with his two sisters, a cat and a horde of spiders, cockroaches, mice, mosquitoes and flies.

In one corner is a battered trunk, holding the family’s meagre belongings. Next to it, towards the edge, stands an ancient stove along with a few kitchen utensils - a kadhai, a saucepan, a couple of glasses and plates. Barely inches away lies his bedding - a couple of tattered saris, crudely quilted together, to lie on and a similar one to shield him from the cold and insects. But now, the entire lot lies in a mess, covered in his sister’s urine and faeces.

Bijon gets up, rubbing his eyes to remove the remnants of a fitful, frequently interrupted sleep, and picking up the milk bottle from the mess, he stuffs it into his sister’s mouth. If she were to begin howling, he’d have hell to pay. He crawls out from his three-foot high room cautiously, careful not to hit his head against the “ceiling”, for that might disturb his parents sleeping “upstairs” and fetch him half a dozen lashes. Once outside, Bijon casts a furtive glance at the two persons sleeping above his “room” - on the cot - his mother and her paramour, lying in drunken stupor, oblivious to the world.

He walks out into the morning to the tap in the corner, washes his face and fills a plastic pot. Making sure nobody’s looking, especially his “father”, he stretches his hand across to the window I’m at, a bare two paces away, and grabs the 10-rupee note kept under a stone on the sill. That’s the price for keeping his window open and the curtain drawn apart so that I can observe his typical day. He returns to his room, carries his baby sister out, cleans her and puts her back on another set of old saris. He mixes some milk for her, washes the soiled bedding and goes back to his space under the bed.

A few hours later, he is hungry. Crawling out again, he reaches for a plate of soggy pakodas, some half-eaten - - his parents’ leftovers from the day before -- and chews on them.

The room stinks. Barely two feet away from the cot - hoisted up on four bricks under each leg so that the overflowing drain water flooding the room in the monsoons, doesn’t reach it - is a cracked “urinal”, sunk into the floor, with a large hole opening outside the room. A tin bucket, half filled with water, and an aluminium mug stand next to it. A dead cockroach floats in the bucket and ants make a feast of the food scraps strewn all over the floor.

The beetel juice-stained urinal, used by his mother and her clients both as a toilet and a kitchen wash area, smells of urine, beedis and illicit liquor. A couple of condoms used by customers the previous evening lie discarded near the hole, their contents leaking out on to the plates and the baby’s milk bottle kept nearby to be washed. All these are barely a few inches away from where Bijon and his sisters eat and sleep. But Bijon has learnt to ignore the sights and the smells. All his instincts are honed towards finding food and staying away from a thrashing, though he isn’t always successful.

Sometime later, he sneaks out to play with his friends Hari and Bimal. Their homes are no better than his. Bimal at 15 is the oldest of the lot. Today he has managed to steal a tenner from his mother’s box. With a princely amount of Rs 20 between them, they feel rich enough to make a beeline for the tea stall in the next lane. Breakfast is a feast: watery tea in tiny clay pots, a few slices of bread and a piece of sticky barfi.

Suddenly aware that he’s been away from home for too long - an hour almost - Bijon rushes back, hoping his absence hasn’t been noticed. But of course it has. A few minutes after he left, his sister, losing the grip on her bottle, began to scream, setting off a predictable chain of events. Bijon’s father-of-the-moment - Sumita’s current lover - angrily kicks her out of bed and Sumita shoves the bottle back into the baby’s mouth, but not before giving her a resounding slap. While she waits for Bijon to vent the rest of her anger on, Sumita exchanges expletives with Romen - her lover - who still lolls on the bed, nursing a hangover from liquor bought with her money, exhausted after a night of sex for which he didn’t have to pay. Playing part-time husband to Sumita - who at 45 knows that the likes of Romen are the closest to a spouse she can get - has its obvious advantages.

The room where I sit, watching the happenings at Bijon’s home, belongs to Shabana. It isn’t too different from Sumita’s. Currently alone - her roomate having run away with a pimp in search of a good life in Mumbai. Shabana agreed to let me use her room after a lot of persuasion. I had to promise I wouldn’t take pictures, draw any attention or peek into her side of the room - partitioned by a torn sari - when she’s entertaining customers and, of course, I had to pay in advance. Only after I furnished proof that this was a part of my fellowship work was she convinced that I wasn’t laying a trap for her.

Bijon returns. Expectedly, he’s greeted with a volley of abuse and sharp smacks with Sumita’s plastic chappals. Romen joins in too, till the wailing boy runs out again.

Few children start their day any more pleasantly in this area. An hour later, Bijon sneaks back to his ‘room.’ Romen has gone back to napping and his mother is out for her morning ablutions. Quickly, he pockets some money and runs out again. This time he’s off to the small shop at the end of the lane, selling puris and samosas.

A little later, Anjoli wakes up. As soon as she crawls out, Romen stirs and drags her to him. I think this is the gentler, paternal side to the man who appeared murderous minutes ago. But Shabana dispels my illusion. “He’s fondling her, not cuddling her,” she tells me harshly. I find it hard to believe, till I see the little girl, hiding in a corner, trying to put her knickers on. Hearing Sumita come back - her loud curses to some neighbour gives her away - Romen had pushed Anjali off the bed.

“He is not her real father, and her mother knows about his interest in her daughters,” says Shabana. “The last time a woman from an NGO tried to inquire into a similar affair, she was heckled and threatened. This locality is infested with criminals and even if she had been murdered no one would know about it. Or even try to prevent it.”

Bijon’s elder sisters, aged 12, 14 and 17, were sold by Romen after he had his fill of them. Sumita doesn’t care. He is the only man who stayed so long with her and she wouldn’t like to lose him, never mind the daughters. Besides, she was planning to induct them into her trade anyway.

The girls, along with free liquor and sex, are the pegs to hold on to Romen. If he wasn’t allowed these little forays Sumita fears he would leave her for greener pastures.

For two years, Bijon and his brother - two years his senior - attended a school nearby, after social workers persuaded many Sonagachi mothers to get the children admitted. Bijon’s brother didn’t care as much for learning as he did for the free meal and a few carefree hours at the school.

But that had to stop after one of his sisters visited the school and took away the elder brother to pimp for her. Since then, Bijon has been detained at home to run errands for Sumita and her customers, to baby-sit his sisters and pimp for his mother at night.

As the morning comes to an end, so does the easiest part of Bijon’s day. The afternoon and evening will throw up more pictures of a growing up process that defies all concepts of parenting and family. Pictures that no protective middle-class family, like that of Ashish’s, will be familiar with.
Yet, Bijon’s is a life as full of learning and activity as Ashish’s. Except that the goals and rewards are different. And for such a miserable future and tortuous present, Bijon has bartered his entire childhood.

By Annam suresh