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As Gujarat erupted
into genocide in the last week of February 2002, a small team of doctors
from Delhi set out for Ahmedabad, under the banner of a little-known
charitable organisation, the Zakat Foundation of India. They took with
them medicines, used clothes and such cash as they could collect; these
were distributed in the course of their work in the riot-affected areas.
When they returned, the team brought with them around 30 orphans between
4 and 12 years old.
Today, deep in the
bylanes of Zakir Nagar in New Delhi, a rickety multistorey building
bears the sign board: ‘Happy Home — Victims of Gujarat Riots’.
This is where the children found shelter after a well-wisher gifted
Zakat the place. As word spread about the foundation’s work, donations
came in, helping send the children to school. Today, Happy Home holds
around 60 children, not only from Gujarat but from the torn coasts of
the December 2005 tsunami.
Visit Happy Home
and you remain embarrassingly unsure of what to say or think. By the
time you are ready to voice your sympathy, five-year-old Amaan careens
into you at a run; before you can react, he says ‘sorry’
and dashes away. Questions chase through the mind — how is he
so cheerful, what happened to him, where is his family, what will his
life be like.
It is the end of
May and most of the children have returned home for the summer. Only
11 have stayed; they either have no relatives or their people are not
able to take them back. The children who have remained are at play;
they have just eaten their lunch. Two go off to sleep, girls chatter
in groups of twos and boys quarrel over a jigsaw puzzle. When the last
to leave for home waves goodbye, there is a momentary silence. Then
the children resume their games. And you are left wondering at their
ability to move on.
