BANGALORE: Twelve-year-old Raja slumps as he carries around a sack burgeoning with discarded CDs, bottles and notebooks. His house is a broken down pavement on Tannery Road, and he fills his stomach with the air that he breathes. But he constantly sniffs on something throughout the day. “Erase-x. That’s what they resort to in an effort to forget the world,” says Daniel Rathnakar J, the related secretary of YMCA’s Children in Crisis Programme. Substance addiction is a common peril that is affecting the street children of the city. “The reasons for resorting to it are many. Family problems, peer pressure, hunger and the need to feel bliss,” says Daniel.Sniffing on Erase-x (whitener) apart from petrol, glue and the likes can intoxicate a person apart from keeping hunger at bay. Without realising the aftermath such substances can have on the body, they take them. In an effort to spread awareness among these street urchins about the harmful effects, YMCA is holding an awareness camp till May 26 in their Kumbalgud campsite. Says Daniel Rathnakar, “We have identified 40 street children and they will be attending the programme.” Resource persons from NIMHANS, along with doctors, social workers, educators and counsellors will be interacting with the street children during the camp. “We are targeting kids between the ages 12 and 15. Children of this age group can be trained and made to understand before it’s too late,” he adds.Prema Manthesh is the programme director of Ragpicker’s Education Development Scheme, an NGO that works with the uneducated and waste picking children of Bangalore. “Using Erase-x can lead to breathlessness, wheezing, skin problems, failure of the kidneys and even memory loss in the long run,” she says. “These kids use it without realising the harmful effects,” she adds. “Bangalore sells about 8,000 bottles of Erase-x a month to these kids,” says John Devaraj, the founder of Bornfree Art School that caters to educating street kids. “Erase-x is an easy option for them. It’s easily available in the market, and since it is a smelling agent, it hits the nerves directly unlike alcohol. It is very addictive,” he says. “These kids also share the substance they get. Sometimes they charge a rupee for a sniff,” he says. John Devaraj says that rehabilitation doesn’t work all the time because the kids want to be free, and the street is the best place for that. “In order to keep them occupied, school and learning have to be made more appealing than the streets,” he says. At John Devaraj’s Bornfree Art School these kids learn through music, art and theatre. “We organise drumming sessions for these kids. Apart from being fun, it helps them sweat out the chemicals that is in the blood stream,” he says.
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