He is amazingly responsible for his age. At 10, Rahul Mir not only goes to school but also earns and contributes to his family.
He collects and sells scrap in and around West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district. "It adds to my family's resources and in turn helps me continue with my studies.
"I want to be a policeman when I grow up. Therefore, I need to study hard."
He gets up around 5 every morning, goes to the dumpyard close to his home, does his 'chores' for about a couple of hours and after submitting the day's collection to his father, who is also in the same 'job', leaves for school.
"Collecting scrap may otherwise seem a dumb job. But you know what, I have learnt to keep myself entertained. As I pick up each piece of scrap, I try and imagine the 'story' it carries," he tells rediff.com.
He takes out two chunks of metal from the heap, puts one on his head, holding the other and shouts, "Ami raja Rahul akhon, juddho ghoshona korchhi (I am king Rahul, the war has begun.)'
And then in the same breath, fishes out a part of another metal with a question, "Do you know what is this? This is a part of a bicycle. It must have gone so old that the owner had to sell it."
"How can someone sell a bicycle," he wonders. "Why not?," you ask and he responds, "A bicycle comprises more than half of my dreams. I think of possessing one every minute, dream of riding it every second."
However, a family of four that earns only Rs 5,000 a month can't even afford visualising one, let alone buying it.
Hence, all that the 10-year-old can do at the moment is scan the city's biggest dumpyards collecting scrap, wishing all the while that some miracle some day would convert it into a two-wheeled wonder.
Image: Rahul Mir. | Photograph: Dipak Chakraborty
Child labour is a dagger through India's soul. The country has the dubious distinction of being home to the largest child labour force in the world, with an estimated 30 per cent of the world's working kids living here.
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