He’s just another businessman in one of the world’s great cities, but with him he carries the love of Merseyside to the poorest of the poor. David Charters reports

HE’S seen the rich high-lording it and the poor scraping the dirt in hope – this bespectacled man with a healthy glow and a smart blue pullover, whose beard now bristles with dignified grey.

It would make you think, though, watching the bare-footed step with the expensively-scented, all breathing the same polluted air in a crazy city, where jets leave their streams in the sky and the two-stroke engines on three-wheeled rickshaws throb and whine.

Then the man says that he looked into the eyes of a boy with more faith than anyone he had known before.

And that boy needed faith by the temple-full, after being lain on a railway track, so that a train could cut off both his legs below the knees – to improve his prospects as a beggar. Well, Brian Kelsall had heard of career choices before, but that . . . he shakes his head in disbelief. You can’t comprehend it. There’s no use trying.

He doesn’t even know the boy’s name, but he does know that helping people like that has given his own life a driving purpose. That’s why he is a member of the Crosby branch of ActionAid, a charity working with the world's poorest people in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

At home Brian, 53, takes part in the usual fund-raising activities – bric-a-brac sales, sponsored events, collection days, tea and buns in draughty halls, all the usual symbols of community activity.

The difference is that he is able to see the results of all this work in Delhi, which he visits regularly as part of his job as an IT senior delivery manager with Steria, the global electronics company.

We talk of the social divisions in England and some of those are wide, but this is extraordinary – on a different scale altogether.

The pleading brown eyes – those ever-so big brown eyes of beggars – staring into limousines, gliding down the roads bearing businessmen to the Sheraton Hotel, where the tandoori restaurant has a vegetarian menu named after Chelsea Clinton. The meat menu carries the name of her father, Bill, the well-padded former President of the US. But, if your wallet is plump, you might prefer Claridges, still shadowed by imperial splendour.

So, from the sandy shores of Crosby, Brian flies 4,300 miles to Delhi. There, two worlds meet on the streets. The fat pass the starving and the starving pass the fat in the ceaseless cycle.

Brian sees them both. In particular, he observes ActionAid’s work among the rag gatherers, the homeless and the disabled in the Okhla area of Delhi, which has been the subject of special fund-raising by the charity’s supporters in Crosby. With him he takes football shirts, baseball caps, small items of jewellery and ActionAid balloons.

In the city, Brian links up with Aditya Nath Jha, the charity’s regional manager, and his two field workers.

It all began 20 years ago when ActionAid placed an advertisement in a local paper inviting people to support them. “I started making donations every month,” says Brian. “I then did the house-to-house collections once a year when the envelopes came out. I attended jumble sales and Christmas fairs, auctions.”

But then he started going to India, as part of his regular work, and used the opportunity to visit the ActionAid base in Delhi, which works with other charities and government agencies.

“We try to help people fend for themselves and not to live on hand-outs all the time,” he says. “If you go to the main railway stations in Delhi first thing in the morning, you will see a mass of commuters coming off the trains, but on the roofs and underneath the carriages there is a whole mass of children – riding hobo-style. You can see that they have travelled a long way. The parents aren’t there with them. The attraction is Delhi, the big city, where the pavements are paved with gold – if only. That’s where they think they can make something of a living compared to home.”

Is this the Indian equivalent of Dick Whittington?

“Almost,” says Brian. “For some children, it does work out that way. Some children get what they think is a regular job, which is often collecting rubbish. If they collect 100 bottles, they can get 50 or 100 rupees, which will buy them some food for the day. It gives them some self-respect, but you can’t let children survive that way.

“Without forcing anybody, ActionAid tries to help those kids – whether it is by bringing them together into hostels or making sure that they go to school. It is very much about self-help. But it is not just children, families come along to Delhi.

“With other agencies, we have helped with the building of schools. They are not necessarily schools as we would understand them. They are single-storey and often made out of corrugated iron or basic materials.

“There are wonderful stories in these schools. In one, I met a boy of about 13, who didn’t have any legs below the knees. He got round in a little cart, which he propelled himself. He was the headboy. I am not talking here of nice uniforms, but he was just the boy, who, by sheer will and personality, used to round up all the kids in the morning to make sure that they went to school. Then he would make sure that they returned to the hostel in the evening. They were safe, fed and secure in there.”

Speaking of these children, often cast out by their own families or orphaned by disease or hunger, is obviously difficult.

Brian, a former student at Kirkby College, is married to Susan. They have two children. Michael, 18, is in the RAF. Mark, 17, is sitting his A-Levels.

Place of birth and upbringing are part of life’s lottery. Sometimes the sons and daughters of the rich fail. Street children have been known to rise to the very top.

When he goes to Delhi, Brian stays in comfortable, rather than lavish, hotels. “I travel to India as part of my work in IT, making sure that we keep going the relationship between the UK operation and the Indian operation, as part of the normal management tasks,” he says. “The visits last between four days and three weeks, which gives me the opportunity to visit ActionAid projects.”

Even now, Brian is struck by the contrasts of India. “People still maim themselves, so that they can have a job begging,” he says. “The boy with the legs was maimed in that way. It was quite deliberate.”

Brian isn’t sure if his parents were responsible, but it happened when he was very young. Since then, he has accepted his fate with resignation. “It was as though he knew what had to be done,” says Brian. “You looked him in the eyes and I think there was more hope, more enthusiasm in his eyes than anyone I had seen for a long, long time.”

Local government now provides some unemployment benefits, such as a bowl of rice a day to the unemployed, as long as you have an identity card. But only people with an address are entitled to a card. The ActionAid hostels provide that. In this way, the hungry, nameless masses become people, each with a name typed into the endless lists.

“We have 40 or 50 regular supporters of ActionAid in Crosby, but there are hundreds of supporters,” says Brian. “My job is to report back to them on the projects, which are helped by their donations.”

Put it like this, the kindness of those people have helped keep the shine in the eyes of a boy rolling his cart down the street. That’s something.

TO READ more moving stories from the pen of David Charters, log on at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/tags/david-charters/

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