First World

She lives on a street corner in Delhi. Not in a house or even a slum but, literally, on the side of a dusty footpath, under a mango tree that’s long since tired of bearing fruit.

Here's your organic fair trade mochafrappolatte, mum. Pic: AFP

She was three or maybe four, dirt-streaked and dung-smeared, her hair shorn not with love but into pest-preventing tufts. Her eyes were still there to look at, but nothing looked back. Hope had already departed.

“She’s probably sick,” my brother said, scooping up the girl’s six-year-old brother and chiding him for not going to school.

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  • marley says:

    03:39pm | 25/06/12

    @SydneyGirl - oh, I didn’t mean it was a hereditary occupation -  obviously most Brahmins aren’t cooks - it’s just that according to a friend of mine there, a lot of the cooks (at least in private homes) happen to be Brahmin for the reason I outlined.  Kind of a… Read more »

  • Scotchfinger says:

    03:29pm | 25/06/12

    @Inky, y our coffee shop ran out of muffins? There is nothing trivial about that, muffins are a serious business. To hell with the sad-eyed little urchin girls. @Anne71, ‘designer clad brood mare’? Fantastic, just wonderful. Read more »

 

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