First Poverty

My first jet-lagged 5PM block outside my hotel after a dizzying, disorienting amount of sleep (with the intention of recovering from jet lag), I find myself on Colaba Causeway. It's a four-lane job that stretches for miles, tiled with Western retail shops encased in glass and A/C, Indian diners, wood and lumber shops, hindu temples (complete with holy cows, incense, and the to-go station on the street where one might pray for a moment and continue walking) and piled atop those are thousands (literally thousands) of street vendors, selling everything from wooden statues of Ganesh to pashminas to sarongs to rotten fruit.

As I was saying, my first block, I meet a young woman, no taller than 4'9", carrying a one, maybe two-year-old in her arms. She's barefoot. She asks me, "Please, sir," and will not accept no for an answer. "I do not need your money, sir, please follow me to this shop; my son needs milk, and cooking rice." She followed me down the Causeway for at least three blocks, and waited for me outside Hutch Mobile's glass door for at least five minutes.