What do ritika, soni, champa and umesh have in common. They are all students of our special section; they are all slow learners and live in a world of their own where things are not quite the same as in ours. They take the same auto every morning under the benevolent care of our forbidding looking Radhey Shyam and spend their day at pwhy, away from their sometimes harsh world.
For a few hours they are in a world where they are treated as individuals and valorised. They spend happy moments till it is time for the return journey.
But ritika, champa, soni and umesh also have something else in common, something their simple minds cannot understand: they live under the dread of having their homes destroyed.. all four are residents of the famous ‘transit’ camps where their parents moved almost 20 years ago, a place given to them by the authorities and which they thought belonged to them, now they have been given demolition notices and told that the space is actually a green belt.. they cannot understand all this.. they simply wonder why they were not able to come to the centre yesterday and no one is willing to explain it to them.. they are unable to comprehend why their parents are angrier than usual, why they did not go to work, why everyone sat on the street and shouted.. why there world was suddenly turned upside down.. mom even forgot to cook…
The mayhem around them is incomprehensible, how are they to uncerstand that the voters ID and tax receipts and other such bits of papers that everyone is holding is of no value anymore, how can they realise that what has been home for as long as they remember might vanish.. how can they begin to imagine how difficult days ahead are going to be as irate and defeated parents will vent their frustration of them.. as always
They simply wait for radhey to come and take them away for a few hours
Note: these four children live in the transit camp that faces demolition by the DDA
