Joshua was born on 11 January 1996 in Chengannur, Kerala. Just months later, he moved with his family to Mumbai, and his journey slowly began to take shape.
At the age of six, things began to unfold. Joshua became a direct recipient of family politics and drama, as his paternal family turned their focus toward ancestral land, property, and money — a pursuit driven by self-interest that cost Joshua and his family more than they could have imagined. Joshua, his mother, and his younger brother bore the weight of what followed, feeling its aftermath well into later stages of life.
That age six became an ultimatum. His own paternal family plundered what should have legally and rightfully belonged to his own — and that was the beginning of a journey through the wilderness. It was the politics, the drama, and the lies dressed up as truth that did the damage. It was what displaced them, and what set them moving.
Without a shelter to call their own, Joshua and his family moved from place to place in search of the most basic human needs: food and shelter. His mother was the family’s only steady earner, and providing for even the essentials became a constant tug-of-war. Debts began to pile up when his mother stopped working, pregnant again with his younger brother. And with that came another tide to weather — moving from place to place, hiding from creditors who threatened to harm them. Fear and the weight of an uncertain future gripped Joshua from as early as age six.
“People ask me how anyone could remember things from that far back in childhood — and I don’t respond to questions like that anymore. Because the truth is, you remember when something has pinched your soul.
I clearly remember when Amma stopped working when she was pregnant, and how we would lock up our house and leave — sometimes staying for hours on a building terrace, or in a park till late evening — just to escape the creditors who came almost every evening, knocking, banging on the door, screaming, shouting. A whole day could feel completely fine, but this constant anticipation of how the evening would go would grip me. I would never forget those days.
I understood what it means to be homeless. I understood what it means to be in debt — the pressure it puts on adults, and more than that, the effect it has on children. I was just six years old.
Even years later, at fifteen or sixteen — borrowing ten or a hundred rupees from a friend — when the time came to pay it back, even though I had the money and ready to return it, that same anticipation, that same dark dread, would come back to haunt me. There was this unexplainable weight in my chest, as if a rock had been placed there. That’s the effect it leaves on you.
Homelessness. Debt. Moving. Hiding. I understand all of it completely.
And the Good Lord allowed it and I’m glad He taught me those lessons early on.”
