My auto came to a halt atone of the dusty, grimy, grey traffic signals that dots the Mumbai suburban landscape. It was just another Mumbai road moment, the air vibrating with the restless thrum of the million engines carrying a million impatient people to their various destinations. A dusty, grimy, grey street child was making the rounds of the waiting vehicles, begging. He was so small that any smaller, he would have been mistaken for the million bandicoots that live under the pavements and sewers. He was begging the way street children are perhaps taught in their Fagin’s academy—touching the passengers, knocking on the raised car windows, his tone whining and pitiful. He approached an auto containing two teenage girls. As he tried to touch them, one of the girls shrieked in a tone colored by disgust and fear, “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” The little child, as like some of us around, was taken aback by the violence of her words. Just then the signal turned green