New Delhi, India - It is before dawn on a balmy October morning, and the city is starting to stir. Municipal sweepers raise clouds of dust as they clean the roadside, tea vendors roll their carts into position, and the traffic is starting to pick up. Abida Begum sits on a pavement beneath New Delhi’s Hazarat Nizamuddin flyover, watching over her sleeping children. Her back is straight, her body is still, and her eyes are alert. She hasn’t truly slept in years.
“People like us don't sleep,” she murmurs without looking away. “We just wait for the morning and pray nothing harms our children.”
The family’s few belongings, a torn blanket, an aluminium pot, a few utensils, and a bundle of spare clothes are stuffed into a dust-coated bag, which she places under her head at night to safeguard from thieves. Her children sleep pressed against her. She is their only shield.
Abida’s world is a strip of cracked pavement along a busy four-lane road, surrounded by plastic-sheet shelters and dozens of other families who live there without walls or doors. This concrete footpath has been home since she arrived in Delhi 30 years ago with her mother from the city of Dhubri in Assam, and it is where three of her children were born.
Abida, now 40, grew up begging in the neighbourhood, and she lived with her mother, who died three years ago. Police officials and municipal authorities would frequently harass them, confiscating their belongings to clear the footpath, while strangers would abuse them. When she was about 21, she married a rickshaw puller, hoping for stability. He drank, beat her and eventually abandoned her and their five children.