As a child, I used to fear that if I swallowed a seed, a plant will grow inside; I used to fear that there’s a large monster waiting for me in a dark room; I used to fear parents have eyes at the back of their heads...Raja Joybeam, 17, still fears that he will be dragged back by rag dolls to his earlier life as a rag picker.
Raja J, as he called himself 10 years ago, was a rag picker in Bangalore’s Jayanagar area (hence the ‘J’ in his name), when he was picked up by the police in a false robbery case and made to wash the toilets in the police station.
He would probably fail to comprehend if I shared my childhood fears with him. We come to know what the fate of that seed would be the next day; or that the size of the monster is as big as our imagination; and as for parents...well they have eyes all over! — The fears become just a good joke. 
For Raja — now empowered with a formal education and a talent for art and sculpture — the rag doll fear is not about trivial pursuits. For him and his friends, who have broken the shackles of abuse and toil, childhood fears are journeys that they never want to make again.
Armed with this conviction and automatic cameras, last year, Raja and 14 of his friends from the streets of Bangalore bicycled 4,040 kms across the states of Karnataka, Goa and Tamil Nadu to discover their roots and to rewrite history of the working children.
A sting operation like never before, these children created 25,000 photographs of toiling children. And 32 hours of film footage was logged. The ‘History Expedition’ as they called it, has now become a potent document against all those who have been reaping profits through the labour of children.
The ‘History Expedition’ project undertaking by the children of Bronfree Art School International, Bangalore, resulted in a short film that was screened in Parliament in New Delhi on August 30 this year, with the United Nations’ chief and the Unicef chief among the guests. Shanta Sinha, chairperson of National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), has asked that the Bornfree report should be tabled before the commission so that they can take legal action against all the guilty.
Amazing, considering that all the primary data was collected by the children themselves. Says Srinivas Victor Hara, 19, (he named himself after Victor Hara, a famous Chilean singer, who was tortured and killed during the fascist coup in Chile in 1973 ), “If we do not free other children then there is no point in our being empowered. It is only now that I understand that there are things like child rights.”
Victor, an orphan, who as a child used to sleep outside a brothel in the City Market area in Bangalore, was deeply moved by the plight of the women. During the ‘History Expedition’, Victor took about 5000 photographs and made Rs 20,000 after some of his pictures found buyers. Fifty per cent of that earning is now in his personal bank account, while with the other Rs 10,000 he is paying for the college education of three other girls of his school.
Says John Devaraj, founder of the Bornfree School, “Every child is born free. Denying them childhood is a crime against humanity! This is adult terrorism. A hundred thousand camps flourish unchecked to sustain these acts of terror.”
Gowri, 14, (her mother died during childbirth at a construction site in Bangalore, and as a child, Gowri cleaned utensils in people’s homes. She was found begging on the streets before she came to Bornfree. She is now in the fifth standard); Lakshmi, 16, (“when I came from Pune to Bangalore years ago, I had no identity, I did not know who I was. Today I have a certificate that mentions my name. I have found an identity.”); Reshma, 13, (she has named herself after the screen name of a Hindi film actress); Elsa, 16, (she is in first PUC and is one of the girl’s whose education is being sponsored by Victor.
She was earlier employed as a domestic worker); Santosh, 15, (does not look more than 10, and is part of the state gymnastic team); Antony Dass (now a standard ninth student in St Joseph Indian High School) — the names are endless and so are the stories.
Says Mioi Nakayama, who was part of the expedition, “I have heard their stories so many times, yet every time I hear them it’s as if they are relating it for the first time.” For the children too, recounting their stories is not easy. Reshma could not stop her tears as she related how her mother passed away and how she went to Dharwad for the last time. “This is my family now,” she says. Victor, the older and wiser one, plays the fool trying to talk about himself in broken Hindi, which he knows will make Reshma smile.
With the mood now lighter, the children get back to talking about their experience of the ‘History Expedition’. They seem just like any bunch of college kids eager and excited about their next expedition — a trip to Ahmedabad in a few days to dance with Mallika Sarabhai! And when Victor, himself a poet, picks up the guitar and sings a song penned by him — “Nanu obba anathanu/ ammana sukhavanu kandilla/ appana sukhavanu kandilla/ yarige nanna preeti kodali”
(I am an orphan; I have never known the love of a mother or father; whom should I give my love to...) — there’s no doubt that these children mean business — ‘I am free. I will free another.’
