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Episode details

World Service,07 Jan 2014,55 mins

Bullet Baby: Born under Fire in Mumbai

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Available for over a year

Five-year-old Goli was born during the 2008 Mumbai attacks, in which 166 people died. Her mother Viju Lakshman Chavan gave birth as a gunfight raged in the corridors of the hospital. Goli, whose name means 'bullet', became a symbol of new life for the battered city. The Cuban ballet dancer, Carlos Acosta, is one of the leading lights of the British Royal Ballet. He was one of eleven children born to a truck driver in Havana. Carlos could have joined his friends in a life of petty crime, but chance took him to Cuba's state-run National Ballet School. Like thousands of young Tunisians, 30-year-old Mohamed Akermi risked his life to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe. But he returned to his homeland just days before the revolution started. He now lives in one of the slums in the capital, Tunis. And he has become an unlikely star of community radio. When he was in high school in Alabama, Orrin Hudson's teacher taught him to play chess - and Orrin says learning how to make good decisions on the chessboard helped Orrin make choices which saved his life. Now he wants to do the same for a million other children.

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