For street children, Tricolour a way to earn, eat, dream even if for a day

For seven-year-old Neena and her 10-year-old sister Cheena, Independence Day means putting aside their usual balloons to sell small national flags.

On a footpath near Janpath in Central Delhi, under the shade of a large generator, the sisters have set up a folding bed that serves as their stall. Spread across it are hairbands, paper fans, bangles and more items in tricolour, all neatly arranged but covered with a mat to avoid catching the eye of the police.

“Pakshi azaad hota hai, vese hi hamara desh azaad hai,” Cheena says with a shy laugh when asked what she understand of the term freedom.

For her, I-Day is different from other days because she gets to sell flags instead of balloons. That’s the top tangible difference. Their lives though barely seem to change with the years.

The sisters live with their father Manoj and mother Laksha on the streets near Paharganj. Until last month, they stayed in a government shelter, but its roof collapsed during heavy rains. “For us, freedom will mean being able to send our children to school and being able to earn an income without being harassed...All festivals, for us, are about selling something new. Today it’s flags, and from tomorrow till Janmashtami, it will be balloons and crowns for children,” says Manoj, who joins his daughters across Central Delhi’s traffic junctions to sell the Tricolour.

Ask the hawkers to describe their day and they all speak of starting each day with rice and dal. Once that ritual is done, Manoj travels to Sadar Bazaar in old Delhi to buy flags in bulk. Each child then gets a small pile to sell. They walk from shop to shop, waving the flags at passersby, hoping to make Rs 150-200 by the end of the day.

Nearby, 20-year-old Naresh and his 19-year-old wife Gaura, also migrants from Sholapur, Maharashtra, sell flags around Hanuman Mandir in Connaught Place.

“Yeh sab din amir logon ke liye hain (Only the rich celebrate such occasions). There is no holiday for me and no celebration for us,” Naresh says commenting on his returns from the I-Day sales. “Last year, the sale of flags was very good. So, this year we came here a week in advance hoping to make good money. It’s been raining since morning, so not many people are coming,” he said.

At Janpath, the happiest moment of the day for Neena and Cheena marks the one in which “Suman aunty” arrives. Suman paints the tricolour on their faces and brings them sweets.

Ask the girls why they are barefoot and they say: “We take off our slippers when we sleep on the footpath, and they get stolen. They also ask this correspondent – “Can you buy us slippers?”

As hawker families go about their days, they also face routine police warnings.

Monu Ahlawat, a Constable at the Connaught Place police station, says families leave their small kids on the road. “Who will be responsible if a vehicle hits them?” he asks.

But the hawkers have a different story to tell. Naresh says they are regularly told to move away from the footpath. “Where will we go? If we stay on the streets, committee people take away our children and put them in shelters. Then we have to fight to get them back.”

For these and many more families selling wares on the Capital streets, August 15 is not about parades or speeches. It is about trying to sell enough flags to buy a meal, repay a debt, or buy a pair of slippers.

For the children, the Tricolour is a way to earn, eat, dream — even if for a day.