SALAAM

11 year old Salaam originally arrived in Mumbai from a small village in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states. Like so many young runaways, he was fleeing domestic abuse – in his case his new stepmother was beating him for not working hard enough. He arrived at Victoria Station in the summer of 2009, but has yet to make it more than a hundred metres from the station perimeter. He soon fell in with a group of older boys, and resorted to begging and pickpocketing to survive. They introduced him to ‘whitener’ a toxic solvent that many of the boys sniff to help them deal with hunger.  When he is not begging, Salaam travels on the trains by faredodging, going to see Bollywood movies and visiting the beach.