At Happy Home, children scarred by violence and loss have set their eyes on higher education and careers

They had come here frightened and anxious about the future. Today, their eyes are bright with hope and an aspiration for a good life.

The 35 children who were brought from Gujarat in 2002 to Happy Home, an orphanage in a narrow bylane off Khajoori Road in Batla House, are now all grown-up. In their early teens today, they have forgotten—well, almost—the bloodshed that rocked the state seven years ago and caused them to leave it. All they want to talk about now is a career ahead and, of course, the frivolities of teenage—hanging around, movies and music.

Shahrukh Khan was eight when his family fled Himmatnagar near Ahmedabad, to a relief camp where volunteers of Zakat Foundation—the NGO that runs Happy Home—offered to bring him to the orphanage in Delhi. Shahrukh is not an orphan like many of the other children at Happy Home, but in the 2002 pogrom, his father’s kirana shop was looted and his family was left penniless.

Seven years on, Shahrukh wants to make Delhi his home. “I will bring my parents here and set up a home in this city,” says Shahrukh, who wants to become a computer engineer. In his spare time, he sits in the orphanage’s computer lab, learning how to Photoshop. “Delhi is a good city. It’s also the place where I’ve spent my childhood. I want to live here permanently,” says the 15-year-old, who visits his hometown in summer and attends God’s Grace school, also run by Zakat Foundation. The school, which offers free education to the orphanage’s children, doesn’t have classes beyond Class VIII and Shahrukh is studying for the entrance test to get through schools in Jamia Nagar.

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