I watched with great interest the documentary film Mother India: Life through the Eyes of the Orphan (2012). With 31,000,000 orphans in India, this film takes us briefly into the lives of 25 orphaned or abandoned youth (ages three to 25) living along the railway in South India. I have been thinking a lot about India, which is suffering intensely from COVID. The world today is sending material aid, blessings and best wishes to our global neighbours, our sisters and brothers in India.

David Trotter and Shawn Scheinoha, who made the documentary, traveled for the first time to Tenali (Andhra Pradesh), a town of 300,000, in 2004. We met Geetha, Reddy, Nagareju, Lakshmi, Kotegwari, Polayya, Yellapah, Satkyananda , Aadamma, Yesu, Abdullabi, Baachir, Chilipada, Raja, Ramu, Sekar, Siva, Gopi, P. Gopi, Hussen, Kiran, Mark, Nageswararao, Nami and Narendra, such exquisite names, brilliant human beings worthy of our consideration. David and Shawn interviewed the children and tried to see life through their eyes. Young people sleep together on cement or dirt floors littered with needles and condoms. Some sleep in store fronts. They wrapped themselves in blankets to avoid mosquitoes and to be recognized as an exploitable youth.

Children beg passing train passengers for money for food, sometimes first “cleaning” or sweeping the floor of the carriage, and then holding out their hands for one or two rupees (one or two cents). At the end of the day, they may have a dollar or two to buy food. The leader of the group was the helpful Reddy (“I only have my mom; she hit me, so I left”), in his early 20s but with more than 10 years living on the street. Reddy would rally the group to help each other. Lakshmi was abused by a foster father who burned her with a hot steel rod. When her boyfriend saw her talking to another guy, he forced her to put her hand under the train. She lost two fingers. Crying, she said that she had a baby, but that she died when she was three days old. Satkyananda’s parents died in a bus accident. Nagareju’s parents beat him and he ran away. A third of the children were missing a limb, often from falling while jumping on the train (jumping train). The kids first wanted to show David and Shawn their injuries: missing fingers, hand, arm, leg, deep injuries. That is an important not hidden but generally ignored component of the pain they were carrying.

“Not upstairs, but in,” David and Shawn decide to leave their comfortable, air-conditioned room at the Gotham Hotel and sleep with the homeless youth on the dirt-and-cement floor. They experienced, if only for one night, exposure to extremely hot weather and a large number of biting mosquitoes. Waking up early, they saw children huddled together, a security group like a pack of puppies, mounds of people covered in blankets. Children brush their teeth in the pit with their fingers and the dust produced on site by rubbing the bricks.

Young people are invited to go to a fair where everyone has fun and has fun, with games and rides, distracting their constant attention from having to survive. All the children had “bad habits” to numb the pain in their desolate lives. Some smoked or chewed tobacco, and others, dangerously sharing needles, injected themselves with an unknown substance, which “took away their sadness.” Some “huffed” inhaling fumes from rags soaked with Erazex, the 50-cent “White-Out” concealer, “so they wouldn’t feel the pain of police beatings, winter cold and rain, and mosquito bites.” The burial site of a young man who died three weeks earlier from an overdose is filmed.

Children were sexualized, older children abused younger children. Geetha relates the sad story that he was sold to the red light district, sex for money. By chance, two men who recognized him took him back to the youth hostel. Clasping her hands in prayer, Geetha says, “I am grateful to these two men.” HIV/AIDS is common among these young people.

However, they have hopes and dreams. His eyes can still light up. “I want to have my own business and enjoy life as a normal person.” “I want to be a mechanic.” I want a good house and get married. “I want to have a house for myself.” David and Shawn turn to their friends at Harvest India to place their two youngest children, brothers Kotegwari, a seven-year-old girl, and Polayya, a three-year-old boy, in their main orphanage. The group packs a bus and heads off to see the orphanage, where they get a haircut, shower, receive new clothes, and savor a delicious meal of chicken, assorted curries, rice, and yoghurt. The children were beaming, “walking differently,” with freshness, self-respect, and dignity.

Reddy and the children help Kotegwari and Polayya move into the orphanage, though they would not choose to live there. Suresh and Christina Kumar oversee the daily operations of Harvest India, a service for, with and of orphaned, abandoned and unaccompanied children. They provide a home for 1,400 children in 26 different locations. Harvest India has been in existence for over 40 years. Suresh says discarded children are miserable, mistrustful, betrayed, homeless, abandoned, with no one to talk to, abused, motherless and fatherless, consumed instead of cared for, exploited instead of loved. Suresh himself grew up in an orphanage where, after his father died young, his mother had found work. Suresh and Christina start the process whereby Kotegwari and Polayya can be adopted by Harvest India.

Harvest India, for all the good it is doing, is not without criticism (fair or not) for not being outspoken about its Christian missionary approach to converting 74% of the Hindu population and 12% of the Muslim population to Christianity. (and other minority religions) which is currently only 6% of the population of India. However, this film increases our awareness in the mind and heart, influencing our world for the better, small steps towards potentially big healing.