Mumbai, June 01: Munna Yadav was addicted to tobacco. Whenever he had a craving for nicotine, he used to throw tantrums. Usual story this. The only unusual part of it is that Munna is just a five-year-old kid.
The boy’s parents are now relieved because he has stayed away from tobacco for the past seven months following his treatment at the KEM Hospital, Parel. But the withdrawal symptoms keep returning to haunt Munna.
Dr Shubhangi Parkar, head of department of psychological medicine, KEM Hospital, said that Munna’s parents came to Mumbai a few years ago. The family rented a place in a Thane slum. The boy’s mother looked after household chores, and his father, a taxi driver, ferried passengers all day.
Munna was barely two years old when he came to the city. He used to spend a lot of time on his own, playing alone at a ground near their home. “An unidentified man, who often used to be present at the ground, started feeding the boy tobacco from his cigarettes,” Parkar said. “The boy’s parents were completely unaware of this.
“It continued for a long time. Munna’s mother first got suspicious when the boy started throwing tantrums every time he was not allowed to go to the ground. One day she followed him to the ground, and saw the man feeding him tobacco.”
The first reaction of the mother was to start beating up her child. Whenever Munna wanted to go to the ground, his mother spanked him. “When the boy was first brought to us, his body was covered with bruises. His growth was stunted as he had stopped eating properly. There were dark circles under his eyes,” Parkar said. “The mother-son relation, too, had been affected.”
The Yadavs left their Thane home and shifted to Chembur, hoping that the new environment would help Munna heal. His addiction by then had become so deep-rooted that the boy had started picking up cigarette butts from the roadside and chewing on them. He refused to attend school.
The doctors advised the boy’s mother to keep an eye on him 24×7. “We put the child on mild anti-depressants to control his bouts of anger,” Parkar said. “We also worked on repairing the mother-son relationship.”
The doctors felt that Munna needed an atmosphere where he would not be exposed to tobacco again. The Yadavs were asked to return to their village with the boy. “The boy’s father stayed back in the city as he has to earn a living for the family. But Munna and his mother went back,” Parkar said.
—Agencies