MUMBAI, July 19: `Home' meant a life within four impenetrable walls, `family' a hurried three-minute-long conversations. After having spent one part of their youth in remand homes, life for its inmates, who must leave when they're 18, is one long struggle with an unfeeling world that has branded them`criminals'.``Studies show that most boys released from remand homes return to jails as criminals,'' says Roy Varghese, executive officer at Crossroad Prison Ministries (CPM), an NGO which helps such boys adjust to society.
This is done by making the boys live with a quasi `family'. Six boys, who have been released from the remand homes in Mumbai, live in Nalasopara with Roy and Princess Varghese.The boys stay with the couple until it is felt that they are ready to face the rigours of a `normal' world. ``We are a unique family. We `parents' are in our late twenties and our `children' between the ages of 20 and 24,'' jokes Roy. The `family' usually takes in six boys at a time. ``When one boy leaves, we makearrangements for another one to come and live with us,'' explains Princess. The first step is to make the boys self-sufficient. ``The boys work as delivery boys, shop assistants, cleaners, linesmen, anything that does not require higher education,'' explains Roy. Their earnings are put in a bank account held jointly with Roy, and is given to them when they wish to branch out on their own. Jobs apart, inducing an attitude change among the boys was one of the toughest tasks, says Roy.The couple also ran into trouble making the boys share the responsibility of running the household. ``They have not been part of a family, so they did not know about sharing responsibility,'' Princess explains. The secret of change, says Roy, is `sharing'. ``The boys would bottle up their feelings in the homes as the slightest complaint was enough to get beaten up. But here, we tell each other all that happened during the day,'' he points out.
The road to assimilation has hardly been hunky-dory. Of four boys who left last year,one has landed in jail for theft and the other has broken ties with the CPM. And the boys face an uphill task when it comes to acceptance. ``People in our society know that the boys are from remand homes, so if anything is stolen in the building, the boys are blamed first,'' remarks Princess. The CPM has now bought land in Badlapur to build homes, for boys not just from remand homes, but also from jails.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
