ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a wide range of violent experiences described and performed by children in the course of a variety of NGO activities and campaigns. Just as children draw from the media, local gossip, and personal experience to tell tales of violence, I contextualise my own re-tellings of children’s stories against the backdrop of prominent events such as the ‘Delhi gang rape’ of December 2012. Drawing on mass media coverage of rape cases, local rumours circulating through one community about cannibalism, and one girl’s obsession with kidnapping, I paint a picture of the pervasive anxiety and insecurity that punctuate young slum dwellers’ lives. Yet, alongside these “exceptional” or “newsworthy” forms of violence, I conclude this chapter by exploring the multiple ways violence and the threat of violence make receiving an education a daily struggle.
