Nepali Times
Nation
Damned


TEXT and PICTURES by GIORGIo TARASCHI


In Thamel, Jamal and many other areas of Kathmandu, you'll see groups of children begging, running recklessly through traffic, smoking and fighting, all under the influence of the industrial glue they sniff habitually. Children as young as five and six wake up in the mornings in filthy beds still high from the night before. Sometimes they're too high to collect free meals and hand-outs from volunteers. Security guards beat them if they stray too close to walled-compounds and pedestrians insult them and call them freaks. But they don't realise that the children sniff glue because they're lonely and unhappy, having fled abusive families only to fall into the street's perilous world.

Ashish wakes up in Tridev Marg while his brother Sunil lies sprawled to his right, lights a cigarette and observes friends still high from the night before.

Anil, Ram, Hari, Kale, Bikash, Hari and Prakash having dal bhat offered by volunteers in Thamel. Volunteers bring free meals twice a week.

Bishal waits for cars to stop so he can beg their passengers for change.

Brothers Sunil and Ashish swimming in a pond in front of the Narayanhiti Palace Museum to escape the heat.

"It's very cheap and you can buy it just in Ason but trust me, once you try, you can't stop because with every breath you take you see God"

Twelve-year-old Sagar wakes up next to a dog after a glue-induced sleep. He and his friends protect street dogs from abuses by other street children, who sometimes fill their ears with glue.

READ ALSO:
The art of escape - FROM ISSUE #462 (31 JULY 2009 - 06 AUG 2009)


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(11 JAN 2013 - 17 JAN 2013)


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