Playing is fun, but playing the whole day on mean streets is not fun. However, the children of migrant labourers have no choice. Dr Iffat Faridi, PhD in Special Education From Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, discovered this after she gave up working due to her husband’s busy schedule, three years ago.

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There are an estimated 15 lakh migrant workers in Bengaluru, where Faridi now lives. These people live with their families in over 800 slums. As Faridi describes it, their morning starts in smoke-filled tiny huts to the smell of nearly-burnt rotis. They watch their parents trying to finish morning chores quickly to get to their construction sites. The kids are left behind, unattended and uncared for.

These labourers spend their days building urban dreams: luxurious homes, splendid offices, beautiful malls... When they return to their tiny huts, they are usually too tired to resolve the issues their children face in their absence.

Enter Dr Iffat Faridi. “I noticed a group of children living in tiny, dingy mud huts on a vacant plot near our apartment complex,” says Faridi. “I observed them roaming aimlessly, playing in mud and sand, crying when other older kids picked on them. There were no elders around to protect them. Once in a while, some well-to-do people would show up with food or sweets or leftovers.”

Faridi realised the need for action. The kids and she started acknowledging each other with a passing smile, a wave of a hand on her daily beat. Soon, it was obvious to both that they needed to know each other better. “As soon as we tried to break the ice, we realised that we did not share the same language. They knew only Kannada and Telugu; I spoke only Hindi and English. This did not stop us from communicating. I asked them, in sign language, if they wanted to study. I was happy to see that they did,” she says.

That was in 2014.

Every day, after gym, she would sit at a big cement slab near their huts and teach them for an hour or so. Other children from nearby huts also joined the class, held under a tree. It worked fine for a while but she realised that the children could not concentrate due to the noise on the street. So she sought permission from her apartment complex management to use the maintenance office as a classroom.

But this was not enough for Faridi. “Once they started enjoying the learning process, I arranged for admission in a nearby school. It was not an easy task to convince them to join school as they feared that the teachers would beat them up. They preferred to study in our informal classroom.” It took a lot of convincing and she even arranged a trip for all the children to see the school and meet the principal. “That day was really challenging,” she recalls. “My fingers were crossed all the time. Fortunately, after many clarifications and assurances from the teachers and the principal, the children agreed to join the school.”

The school was barely a kilometre away but an auto was arranged to take the students back and forth so that they could not find excuses to run away from classes; and, well, also to enjoy the auto ride. Faridi keeps a strict vigil to ensure that they all attend school regularly and happily.

Reshma, a Kannada teacher, agreed to tutor the children after school, while Faridi continued to teach them English on holidays. The are now among the brightest students in their respective classes.

The number of kids keeps changing as some leave to join their parents on construction sites. While the class had 25 children in the beginning, it now has 12 who attend regularly. The challenges are huge and interventions from agencies are welcome. A Project, ‘Mobile School’, is under consideration for these kids to give them immediate educational support.