Benji busy preparing a dish at his adoptive family’s eatery in Kolkata
KOLKATA: Born into loss in Kerala, raised without memory of parents, and finding a home after decades of drift, 50-year-old Benjamin – “Benji” in Kolkata’s Beleghata – says the state has made him an orphan again. EC’s SIR of electoral rolls has struck off his name, snapping his only formal identity link as a voter. Meant to cleanse rolls, the exercise has left edge cases like his stranded between identity and proof, where lived family does not meet documentary thresholds. An orphan since infancy, Benji lost his mother at birth and his father soon after. After time in a Kerala orphanage, he ran away, joined a circus troupe, and at 21 was brought to Kolkata as a shop help. Months later, he was taken in by Jayanta Baral, who ran a fast-food stall. Since 1999, Benji has lived with the Baral family, calling octogenarian Padmarani Baral his mother. The arrangement gave him stability – and eventually, citizenship on paper. After years of persuasion, he applied for a voter ID before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and voted. He also holds a ration card. That fragile recognition collapsed during SIR. In his enumeration form, Benji again named Padmarani as guardian. This time, officials did not accept the relationship. With no records of biological parents – names he cannot recall – his case stalled at a hearing and his name was deleted. “In my lonely life, I felt important for the first time during the 2024 LS election,” he said. “After that, losing the right hurts more.” Around the stall where he has worked for decades, regulars say paperwork has trumped presence. Benji is now searching for a way back onto the rolls – through papers, affidavits and appeals – trying to prove he exists.
