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A sullied hand tugs insistently at your clothes. You turn to see a little arm outstretched – peremptory and tentative at the same time – a small head of tousled, matted hair, patchy and pallid skin coated with many days of unwashed dirt, bare sprightly feet, and a loose faded frock almost slipping off the little girl’s slender shoulders. On those shoulders rests the burden of the survival of a large destitute family. And yet, almost miraculously, what shines through the grime is the most beautiful pair of sparkling black eyes.

Delhi has far fewer street girls than boys, but those girls who are forced to work on its mean streets negotiate daily the metropolis at its most predatory. Shahida is barely ten years old. Part of a family of migrants from a village near Kolkata, she is delicate and fragile behind her grubby exterior. Neither she nor her younger sister can hear or speak. Their father is addicted to smack and lolls about all day in a small rented hut in Shastri Nagar. His two daughters beg with wordless insistence at Hanuman Mandir near Yamuna Pushta.

To throngs of waiting beggars, some temple devotees give bananas and other fruits, others bring cooked kulchas and kachoris with halwa; many give away sweetmeats as prasad. On festival days or in memory of loved ones, some even distribute clothes. But the day’s work for the sisters is not complete without collections of alms of cash, coins wheedled out of those who line up for worship at the shrine. Their mother sits on a side lane, and the deaf-mute girls leave with her their collections, and run back for more.

Harsh ManderUnder Grey Smoggy Skies: Living Homeless on the Streets of India’s CitiesYoda Press (February 2026)

A group of volunteers are sitting outside the temple gates, talking with a group of girls who........

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