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Description
After I'd taken this photograph, I tried to ask in mime (I knew no Marathi, and not much Hindi at that time) whether they minded. The lady on the right laughed, and addressed me in excellent English, asking me if I spoke English.

We had a conversation while they breakfasted, and then they had to get changed to go to work. They took turns to hold a triangular cloth screen out from the post for each other to change inside, and emerged like butterflies from chrysalises - immaculately dressed in beautiful saris.

They both worked as English language secretaries in an import-export business. Yet they were living on the pavement, with all their worldly possessions locked in those two scruffy trunks all day while they were at work.

They were lucky: the sarpanch (village headman, roughly speaking) of the village they came from had lent them the money to pay for their training, and they were expecting to have to work for five or six years to save enough money to pay him back and pay for their own marriages back in their village. They said they could afford to live in some horrible little room (their description) and knew that they'd have to when the monsoon arrived, but in the meantime they preferred to save more money. A friend of theirs didn't have room for them, but had lent them her address; their employer didn't know they were living on the street.

Not everybody living on the pavement is so lucky, of course - for example [link] or [link] - I didn't speak to those people, but I'd be surprised if their story was as happy.

Bombay (Mumbai now) December 1983.

Description
After I'd taken this photograph, I tried to ask in mime (I knew no Marathi, and not much Hindi at that time) whether they minded. The lady on the right laughed, and addressed me in excellent English, asking me if I spoke English.

We had a conversation while they breakfasted, and then they had to get changed to go to work. They took turns to hold a triangular cloth screen out from the post for each other to change inside, and emerged like butterflies from chrysalises - immaculately dressed in beautiful saris.

They both worked as English language secretaries in an import-export business. Yet they were living on the pavement, with all their worldly possessions locked in those two scruffy trunks all day while they were at work.

They were lucky: the sarpanch (village headman, roughly speaking) of the village they came from had lent them the money to pay for their training, and they were expecting to have to work for five or six years to save enough money to pay him back and pay for their own marriages back in their village. They said they could afford to live in some horrible little room (their description) and knew that they'd have to when the monsoon arrived, but in the meantime they preferred to save more money. A friend of theirs didn't have room for them, but had lent them her address; their employer didn't know they were living on the street.

Not everybody living on the pavement is so lucky, of course - for example [link] or [link] - I didn't speak to those people, but I'd be surprised if their story was as happy.

Bombay (Mumbai now) December 1983.