Being a poor orphan in India doesn't just mean losing a familial support structure. It usually means a life of deprivation, a daily struggle to scrounge together a few scraps for a meal, and ultimately, deep psychological wounds that can permanently scar a child. But some rare ones do find a fairy-tale they'd believed could never exist. People like Prem Prakash. A man whose tale seems like a straight lift from a Bollywood scriptwriter's table.
It's the story of a destitute who turned against the fate that seemed to have been decreed for him. And now tries to give others the power to do so. Prem started life as a beggar and today is the principal of the Netaji Memorial Orphan's Residential School in Gumla, Bihar. Abandoned, orphaned adivasi children from across the state come to him in search of succour and education. Reliving his own past in their emaciated bodies and vacant eyes, Prem and his wife, Soshan, lovingly take them in. They currently have 33 such tribal orphans living with them.
Prem lost his parents when he was barely three years old. Out on the streets of a hamlet in Chhota Nagpur in Bihar, he lived off charity, or by rummaging through the garbage dumps. Once, despite running a high fever and literally dying of thirst, he still couldn't pluck the courage to knock on a neighbour's door as it was the middle of the night. Relief finally came in the form of a rain storm. "Summer was the time I loved best, as it offered a chance to slink into an orchard and steal a ripe mango," he reminisces. Whether grazing cattle or working as a dishwasher in a roadside dhaba, life taught him a few early hard lessons.
So, at age 13, when he was thrown out by a dhaba owner for daring to stand up to a drunk customer, the angry youth took the next train out. That journey was to lead to the first of his fairy-tale changes of luck. He'd no idea where the train was going and just got off at Bareilly. But a kind fellow-passenger took him to a well-managed government-run home cum school for destitutes. From this point on, Prem's life took a dramatic turn. He passed out of the school and took up several odd jobs before becoming a teacher in a Bareilly primary school. As he got involved in his work, a dream took shape. And, Prem Prakash decided that one day he'd run a similar school for orphan children in his native village.
Managing to save about Rs 500 from his modest salary, he finally moved to Ghaghra, in district Gumla, Bihar, and started his own school from a dilapidated, rented house. Here, word about the man and his work soon spread. And a few years later, on a hot summer afternoon, Prem opened his door to one Sushil Kumar Kachhap, a man who worked with leprosy patients. Kachhap had come all the way from Madhya Pradesh after hearing about Prem from one of his associates. He'd come to offer his daughter's hand in marriage to Prem. The fairy-tale was beginning in earnest.
Together, Prem and Soshan Kachhap, whom he married on April 1, '86, began to save funds for extending the school building and a residential complex for orphans. It was tough, but luck, it seems, having once smiled at Prem was not about to desert him again. And four years later, he won, of all things, a lottery that had been bought in the name of his one-year-old daughter, Survi. The lottery prize was a car, but since Prem didn't know what to do with a four-wheel luxury drive, the organisers exchanged it for a sum of Rs 1.50 lakh. The amount promptly went into a new pucca building for the primary school on a one-acre plot donated by some philanthropists. Later, a residential facility for the orphans was also added.
Some 300 village children now attend the school. The working capital for the orphanage is raised from the fees collected from these students and, in part, from Soshan's salary as a government school teacher. Of late, contributions have also started to come in. The children, aged six to 14 years, mostly hail from nearby villages. The curriculum, though simple, tries to focus on their all-round development. Today, Prem and his wife are a picture of contentment surrounded as they are by the beaming faces of "their 33 children". Their address: Netaji Memorial Orphan's Residential School, Ghaghra, 835208, Gumla, Bihar.