Crafting a home in pictures

“A new family has come to the site — a boy and his parents. Like many others, they have been forced to move to the city, where the father can earn a little money as a labourer. Back home there are no jobs and nothing to eat.”

This is the narrative in a short picture book, Home Away from Home written and illustrated by teachers at the non-profit Mumbai Mobile Creches. The NGO, which has been running day-care centres near construction sites for children aged up to 14 years, felt that the stories of these kids remain unwritten and untold.   

While going through the centre’s library, the teachers realised there weren’t any books that the kids could relate to, “The basic aim of having these books in the library is to increase the interest and the reading ability of these children. To develop a keen sense of understanding the world they are unaware of. When we saw the books, there were none that the kids could identify with,” adds Katta Babu, a teacher with the centre.

The shelter houses over 1,200 children of migrant workers from over 15 different states of the country, speaking over ten different languages. The idea was to weave the stories around their lives. “Their parents are employed as labourers and unskilled workers at these construction sites. The kids start afresh every time they move places, and one of the major issues they face is leaving their friends behind every time,” he elaborates.

The teachers made it a point to design their characters based on the conversations they had with the kids. The children spoke about their homes in the villages, which they preferred over cities. “During our discussions, we realised they missed their friends and pets that they always left behind. We then made it a part of the narrative; we also included construction sites, their surrounding and classrooms in these illustrations,” he adds.

The kids soon started drawing semblance with the books and are in love with it, “When the first set of kids first got the books, they naturally compared it to the stories they had always been reading and were delighted to see a striking resemblance to the characters they read about,” Katta shares.  

The book has been published in Hindi and English, and they now plan to distribute it across the country, “The lives these kids live are not easy, yet no one knows about them. We want to introduce people to the lives of these children and their parents, rarely are they spoken of, much less are their stories narrated in books,” he concludes.