He was a real nowhere man/ Sitting in his nowhere land/ Making all his nowhere plans -- till he found a saviour in seven women who lived next door. Ashutosh Rai is hardly a man at 10, but the rest of the Beatle’s classic could well have been sung for him.

After his father, who ran an imitation jewellery shop, died in 2010, the boy, then just seven years old, stared at a bleak future since his mother Sunita’s salary as a cleaner in a local hospital wasn’t enough to sustain his schooling.