Bawas and coffee on a Saturday night

Cliches abound, so do tales of funny Gujarati, prominent noses, and eccentricity. This Saturday night, sitting with 4 Parsees in a coffee shop at 1 o'clock in the morning, I watched all the cliches come true. But what I also saw was that they are probably the sweetest people I've ever met. An integral part of Mumbai; lets bow to the Bawas.

The Kids

These kids are everywhere - hawking odds and ends on trains, selling newspapers at traffic junctions, begging on roads, sleeping on pavements. How many do you see everyday? What do you do when you can no longer shut it out of your head that you are warm in your cosy little bed, while countless little children shiver on a cold, hard sidewalk... When you can no longer hide behind the book that you are trying to read... When you can no longer avoid a pair of sad, brown eyes, old before their age?