Eleven-year-old Sharad Goekar might have won a national award for his reel-life histrionics in Marathi film Tingya, but in real life his family is fighting for a place to live in. The family, comprising parents and six children, has been moving from one temporary shelter to another for years and currently stays in a ramshackle tent erected along the Mumbai-Vishakapatnam highway at Rajuri village in Junar taluka of Pune district. “Sharad has received many awards for Tingya, one from President Pratibha Patil. We don’t have a permanent place to eat and sleep; where will we keep this latest award?” asks his mother Yamunabai.

Sharad belongs to the Dhangar community, a nomadic tribe originally from Ahmednagar district. After the success of Tingya, he was taken into Sinhagad Spring Dale English medium school and adopted by a family. “We continue to live in pathetic conditions. Only when our financial condition improves will we be really happy. Otherwise, more awards will only pose the problem of finding a safe place to keep them,” says his father Yeshwant Goekar.

The search for finding a proper living place has already begun. Shirur MP Shivajirao Adhalrao-Patil, in whose parliamentary constituency Ale Phata falls, says he is determined to provide Sharad and his family a decent dwelling place.

“Sharad has brought glory to Maharashtra. The entire nation is singing his praises. Despite hailing from a very poor family, Sharad has shown his class to the world. But it is painful to see a skilled child with no place to live,” he says, adding that he will try to get a readymade house or build one from the MP’s fund.

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