HOME.STREET.HOME

As a young boy I ran away from home and lived for a while on a railway platform, worked at a dhabba, made my way through other odds, before finally going to a shelter home. There, I experienced a range of emotions- rivalry, respect, bonding, care, love - that helped me in forming my own idea of home, of intimacy.

Children’s lives in a shelter home often reflect a drastic change from their prior lives in the streets. The Street is ruthless, cut throat, and survival is tough. In contrast, shelter home is a secure sanctuary that provides children, deprived of many things, the most elementary thing – a sense of home.

When I reflect, I find it incredible how a group of belligerent boys – complete strangers – brought together only by circumstances under one common roof slowly become a family. What is it that instills this feeling of brotherhood and intimacy? Is it the common trajectory of their lives? Is it the comfort or the compulsion to live in a space? Is it the idea of sharing?  

Whether it is because of their common past or their mutual present, the idea of home and family centers around the shelter home. How do children live their childhood in this new family, what are the relationships that they develop, how do they relate to the authority that governs, how do they assert themselves, their identities in institutional life? These are some of the questions I wish to address through this photo series.

Partly hence, this project is a self-reflexive one, where I use the visual medium to create images similar to the ones that are fixed in my memory. I am aware, however, that this experience of a home may not necessarily be a homogenous one. The attempt is therefore to document the range of experiences, of bonding, and most importantly, of a perception of home, of apna ghar.