Grim and vivid account of beggars and charity in Mumbai.
A small hand takes mine. A tiny three-year-old half-naked boy with a bowl hair cut and his trousers hanging off wants something. I offer him 20 rupees and am astonished when he pushes it back at me. He quietly says 'Milk powder'. What? 'Milk powder'. His sister needs it. 'Where can we get it?' 'Here…' He drags me to a street stall. A tin with 60 servings is 250 rupees, about £4, way beyond the pockets of most of the people here who need it. In case you are interested, in case you want to boycott them for the rest of your life, the splendid manufacturer of this product is Nestle.
Of course I buy the stuff for the heartbreaking boy and inside my stomach churns. A girl arrives and our Liverpool friends buy her the same. I give the boy the powder and he hugs it like a toy. We ask him his sister's name. 'Shika. She will grow big.' We go to a bar and try not to weep for this awful place which has made it necessary for that wee boy to understand the difference between 20 rupees and milk powder. We absolutely f**king hate it here. A friend emails to say that when she went to Mumbai, she cowered in her room and wept.
Link
Discuss
(Thanks, Static!)
