Not far away from Trichy one finds the great temple city Srirangam. On an island 27 kilometres long and 2 kilometres wide, between the two arms of the Cauvery River, live 70,000 people in a district dedicated to the God Vishnu. That is all the tourists see. What the tourists don’t want to see and maybe can’t see is on the outskirts where the Indian economic miracle has not yet arrived. Here in pitiful huts made of wood and bamboo, without electricity and running water, in the stinking misery of the cesspools, in the caustic dust of the unpaved roads live all these people who have received no benefits at all.

Is it because they have never had any chance to acquire any kind of education or because alcohol and compulsive gambling have ruined their families? Is it because AIDS and malaria have killed the breadwinners, or is it because they belong to the caste of the untouchables?

The tourists never come to this place, and they shouldn’t come here, the slums of city. And so the tourists never see these children, either. Skinny, dusty and frightened children with gaunt faces and huge eyes who have already seen much too much of death and misery. If they are able to walk, they are sent out to beg or they scrape out a bare existence as slave labourers working for starvation wages in small factories.

In case they are ill, they are left to die. Hundreds, thousands of these children have lost their parents. Hundreds, thousands of these children have no prospects, no hope, no future.

And as if the tropical illnesses, the insufficient medical care, the malnutrition, the slave labour and the Indian caste system which seems so terribly outdated to us Europeans, had not caused enough problems, the Tsunami struck on Boxing Day in 2004. Hundreds of people lost their lives in the deluge which flooded the area around Trichy, there at the southern tip of India where three oceans come together.

Those who were left behind often lost nearly everything they had. It seems to us it was merely cardboard and corrugated iron, plastic and rotten wood – but for countless people these were houses and huts, miserable, patched up and drafty sheds which provided them shelter against the clammy, cold days of the monsoon.

The tourists have come back to Trichy since that unforgettable and cruel Boxing Day. They climb up the 432 steps of the Rock Fort Temple, admire the breathtaking view over the city and the river and the rooftops of the temples, and travel to Srirangam. And then they resume their trip homeward. They have no time or interest in the children on the outskirts.

The Hansa Niwas Foundation does have an interest in these children; we know their names. Help us to give these children more than simply a name. Help us to give these children a future.