"No mummy, no papa"

The junction at Mahalakshmi temple is one that has no less than three or four roads leading in and out of it and is one of the busier junctions in the city of Mumbai.

Now that the random trivia is out of the way, here comes the point. It's also a junction frequented by a variety of beggars and mobile hawkers. I've already dealt with beggars and the various tactics they employ, so I'll get straight into mobile hawkers. Contrary to the name, they don't actually sell mobile phones (well maybe, toy mobiles but, I digress) but they in themselves are mobile.

Traipsing as they do from vehicle to vehicle that's at a traffic signal, trying to peddle their wares. Bootleg books are one of the things one regularly encounters people — most often little kids — trying to sell. So there I was at the aforementioned junction a couple of days ago, when I see a little girl clutching a stack of books walking from car-to-car until she notices a CR-V, inhabited by two obvious out-of-towners. The Caucasian features are a dead giveaway.

She knocks on the window and holds up a bootleg of one of the countless books on Barack Obama doing their rounds. "Obama!!" she says in a voice loud enough to penetrate the rolled-up window (presumably to keep the cool air in and the... well, you get it). The man shakes his head. "Thousand splendid suns," she yells next clutching Khalid Hosseini's book and holding it up to the window. The man shakes his head again and rolls the window down a little and sticks out his hand with a ten rupee note in it.

Little girl refuses to accept any hand outs or alms... She's a businesswoman, after all. She walks around to the other side of the car, spotting a woman sitting next to the man. "Madam! Obama!" she shouts. Woman also shakes her head. Holding up a copy of Q & A which is now being sold under the name Slumdog Millionaire, she asks, "Slumdog?" The woman again shakes her head.

That's when the little girl pulls out a real gem and a gem of such shine and polish that it merited me writing a whole blog about it. "Madam, I have no mummy, no papa. I also slumdog," she says. Goddamn! Did I just hear that, I asked myself. Certainly did. "I (am) like this slumdog only," she says pointing at the book. The woman doesn't want the book but rolls down her window, this time offering the girl a 100 rupee note. The girl says no and walks off.

That's called taking pride in what you do.

Piqued by curiosity, I ventured back there yesterday and tried hunting her down and asking her some questions. None of which were ominous, I assure you. While on one hand, selling bootleg books is pretty illegal, she's gotta make a living. After much coaxing, she volunteered her name — Seema. A bar of chocolate and further questions brought out the fact that she was 9 and that she gets into a lot of trouble with her supplier, if she doesn't sell the books.

She also disclosed that people try to palm her off with alms, but that, apparently, is not her beat. "Main bhikari nahi hoon (I'm not a beggar)," she told me as she trotted off to sell some more books, clearly pissed off that I had wasted her time and had no inclination to buy a book.

P.S. - New layout, y'alls!