On the street, with no way home   Premium

Raju, 14, loses his beloved aunt and mother in quick succession. He searches for her, and after 10 years, finds her in a mental care hospital. Homeless people with mental health conditions are common, but lack of access to mental healthcare and government support make it hard for them to recover. Raju's reunion with his mother is a rare event, and highlights the need for concerted effort to address the problem.

Raju, 14, lost his beloved aunt, the matriarch of their family of five, in November 2007. Just as life was slowly returning to its rhythm, one afternoon, when Raju came home from school with his brother and sister, he couldn’t find his mother, Lakshmi. Just a few months ago, she had taken her children and walked out of a violence-ridden home, where her husband beat her up regularly.

Not finding her at home, Raju decided to wait for his mother. But as the hours passed with no sign of her, the then Class IX student knocked on the doors of every house in his neighbourhood in Bhimavaram town of West Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh, with the hope that someone would know where she was. With his mother missing, he felt an overwhelming sense of desolation.

Days turned into weeks, and there was still no trace of her. Raju’s sister, then 5, was put under the care of a relative in Hyderabad, while his younger brother, 11, found employment at a hotel. Raju was left to fend for himself.

“There were countless sleepless nights. I can’t explain the feeling in words. How can you, when you lose the only adult in your life? In just one week, I lost my aunt, my mother, and my siblings,” he recollects.

Now 33, and married with two children, Raju received a call from his cousin in July this year, telling him that his mother was alive. With bated breath, he rushed to the Government Mental Care Hospital in Visakhapatnam where Lakshmi, 48, had been admitted after being rescued from a street opposite the Mandal Revenue Office in Anakapalle, 24 km from Visakhapatnam. He finally saw her — the same face, the same voice.

“It was indeed my mother. To my surprise, she recognised me immediately,” says a teary-eyed Raju, standing outside his one-room house at Perupalem village, about 25 km from Bhimavaram, in the same district. He had moved there after his mother went missing, to stay close to his relatives. Raju and Lakshmi represent one of the rare events where a family is reunited.

According to the 2011 Census, there are nearly 17.72 lakh homeless people across the country, with more than 9.38 lakh people in urban areas and 8.34 lakh in rural areas. Uttar Pradesh tops the chart with 3.29 lakh living on the streets, followed by Maharashtra (2.10 lakh), Rajasthan (1.81 lakh), Madhya Pradesh (1.46 lakh), and Andhra Pradesh (1.45 lakh).