Monday afternoon, a few hours before we planned to leave for the airport, I left the Park Hotel and walked to an Internet shop in a filthy basement two blocks away.
   My friend Phool, the Sikh doorman, wanted to know where I was going and tried to get me to take a taxi. I protested, saying I could easily find it myself, as I had been there a few hours earlier. He kept insisting, and I kept refusing until he finally asked the designated cabbie to walk with me, for protection.
   I said I was fine, but the young man came along anyway, until I shooed him away. Within a mere 200 yards I was approached by five men selling handkerchiefs, three tuk-tuk (three-wheeled vehicles that run on propane, also known as auto rickshaws) drivers offering rides, one who persistently told me he could show me the “real Delhi” and all the sights for 100 rupees ($2.50). When I told him I had seen them all, he asked me if I was a tour group leader. I said no, but I could be, and he left me alone. The next two men were selling sunglasses, “very cheap—no buy, only look.” I waved them off and continued on my way.
   I headed into a subway passage that leads under the maddening traffic spinning around Connaught Circle, on the look out for street kids to feed, and pickpockets to avoid. 
   Upon reaching the steep, dark stairs to the Internet shop, I descended and found my IT man, ready to send a 20 page fax to the U.S. His price was cheap enough, but his machine was slow and he was going to charge me $1 a page plus the phone line charge. After he sent the first page and I realized this would cost me $40, and told him to stop, as I would be home in 24 hours. I thanked him for his trouble and asked if I could take some pictures of his business. He and the other customers laughed as I snapped a few shots of the appalling electrical hookups, computer set-ups, and the three neon-colored paintings of Hindu gods stapled to the wall, and the keyboards  wrapped in stiff, clear plastic, which made it almost impossible to hit the right keys.
   As I left the shop, I noticed one of the sunglass salesmen I had seen on the other side of the street 20 minutes earlier was waiting for me. Again I waved him off and stepped into the underpass where three raggedy street kids, who looked like they were three or four years old, but could have been older, sat on the grimy stairs. I reached into my bag and pulled out three wrapped packages of cookies and handed one to each of them.
   They were startled and the one girl in the group tried to grab all three, but I said one for each and kept walking; as I looked back she was smiling at me as she ripped open the bag.   One local source says there are 100,000 children fending for themselves in Delhi alone. When I was in India two years ago I saw dozens of them living in train stations, crossing the tracks and sleeping on the cement floors.
   I continued on my way back to the hotel, past the handkerchief sellers, who imagined I might have changed my mind since the last time I passed by, past the same Sikh tuk-tuk driver who again offered to take me to some great markets, past a man with no legs who sat on a cloth laid out on the sidewalk selling limes from his outstretched hands, past forlorn dogs sleeping in the mud underneath the sycamore trees, past men in business suits and scarlet turbans, past young women in jeans and older ones in saris, past people wearing shoes but many who had none.
   When I reached the front of the hotel I stood back from the street and set my camera on telephoto and proceeded to document the scene at the bus stop across the four-lane avenue. Perhaps a hundred people were waiting at any given time—students, housewives, working men and what appeared to be young men with nothing better to do. A old man wearing a faded and torn sarong, a colored shirt and a grey turban stood on the narrow median between the racing rush hour traffic and watched the scene, much as I did.
   We watched buses pass that were so crowded people were hanging out the doors, a few fancy cars and many black and green Ambassadors—the round Russian-made taxicabs, a woman with no legs who sat on a wooden platform as she pedaled a bicycle-like contraption with her arms, a man carrying a large heavy load of cardboard on his head, many men pedaling ancient steel-frame bicycles with no gears and no brakes, and a great many people just walking.
   As I stood there in the afternoon Monsoon heat and humidity, sweat ran down the back of my legs beneath my skirt and puddled in my sandals. I noticed a woman in front of me with sweat soaking the back of her choli – the short tight shirt Indian women wear under their saris.
   In front of me a painfully thin mother dog appeared and began to drink from a metal bowl on the sidewalk someone had apparently left for the street dogs who call this stretch home.
   I watched a man cross the street in front of me with a thin girl, of perhaps 4 or 5. When he saw me I saw him motion to the child, and she started to cry as she headed for me. She circled around where I stood as the man kept an eye on her. As I had no more cookies, I gave her a smile and a “namaste,” turned and entered the hotel lobby.