MUMBAI: A Facebook post by Chris Bray tells the story of how a man named Dick Smith, travelling India by train a few weeks ago passed a homeless family living under a bridge, including a young girl wearing nothing but a pink bracelet. He snapped some pics on his iPhone, noted down the GPS position, and asked if Bray and his companion Jessica, would like to go to India, try and find this same girl & her family, help them into accommodation, secure the girl an education, buy them life's basics and open her a bank account for Dick to regularly deposit into - all in three days!

Here’s the story:

This distant photo of the family and the Google Map location is all we had to go off.

3PM on Day 1, we landed in Vadodara, climbed into a crazy rickshaw and braved the traffic chaos to our hotel…

We made it to the bridge, known as 'Polytechnic Bridge' or 'Shastri Bridge', with the huge 'Study, Work & Settle in New Zealand' advert sign beside it...

Day 2: Getting desperate, we we walked into a bank to try and meet the manager Ratan who was the friend of a friend of a father of a friend of mine (Thanks so much fror the contact Anna!). He (front left) introduced us to the wonderful Dr. Chellani (front right) from the university who agreed to help. He drove all all down to the railway bridge to try and find the family…

We started asking around if anyone recognised anyone in Dick's photos....Everyone denied everything - telling Dr. Chellani that they'd never seen any of the people in the photos before…

But then we saw this man in red with the plastic leg (turnes out a train cut it off!) who was also in our photo! He agreed it was him, and then others started to admit they recognised others too…

Pasing around this photo, this woman recognised the girl with the pink bracelet and pointed to a woman she said was the girl's mum. The mum agreed that was her daughter in the photo, and she sent for her - she was playing out the back somwehere…

That's her! She's the girl in the photo! She still had the pink bracelets on too! Amazing! Her name is Divya, meaning 'divine light', and she's 8yrs old!

I handed Divya a copy of Dick's photo, and it was explained that my friend had passed by in a train a few weeks ago, and seen her & her family, and taken a photo, and we were just here to give her the photo…

Everyone warmed up then, and we met the whole family, she has two brothers, 7 and 2yrs old, both who were also in Dick's photo… The parents had been living under the bridge for 12 years, and Divya had been born there just under the bridge without any nurse etc. As the father was away at work (a plasterer, earning $4-6/day, not enough to afford even a slum house while also caring for three kids) we decided it was best to wait until the dad came home from work to discuss with the whole family to see if there was a way we could help. Dr. Chellani told them to meet at the Bank that afternoon. We even had to pre-warn the security guard to actually let them in…

So on the afternoon of Day 2, the whole family filed shyly into the bank managers office and sat down...

It was a pretty special moment to be sititng there, as the messengers of such a generous, life-changing gift, and watching realisation dawn on this family that we wanted to pay rent for them to move into a house, help Divya get a good education, help the father earn a better wage to help them start to help themselves etc…

Next morning, Day 3, we all met up again in the bank, and first things first, we wanted to open a bank account for the girl, with the mother as the guardian, so that Dick could deposit rent etc every month, which would then be automatically transfered to the rental account etc. However they didn't even have the most basic form of ID that identified them even as an Indian citizen, no fixed address, or anything. Amazingly though, Mr. Ratan found a way to help, opening them what's called a 'Smile' bank account, a new initiatve for people with no ID…

Still quite shy, Divya was starting to warm to us...

Dr. Chellani suggested we write up a formal contract linked to the account, specifying what the funds are allowed to be used for (Rent, and furthering the girls education), and to give them confidence that this was to be ongoing, a minimum guarantee of 2yrs of an agreed level of funding, after which it will be reviewed etc (although the plan is for it to be more than 10yrs). We later added a condition that Divya must attend school regularly else funding can be stopped (the principle will provide monthly attendance reports to Dr. Chellani, who is also a 2nd signatory on the account, to oversee & ensure the funds are spent correctly)...

Merry Christmas!

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YASH SHARMA