Life is really hard!

Living rough and underfed, a young girl tries to relax. Her situation is no secret, and she attracts little attention from family members, thus remains utterly demoralized.

Saleema is dressed in a brown ‘shalwar qameez’ and white ‘dopatta’. Her clothes are faded but clean. Around her neck she wears a ‘taweez’. She sits quietly, gathered into herself, a watchful expression on her face. She is small and, were it not for this sense of wariness, she would look younger.

She gets up at 6:00 a.m. to light the cooking fire and prepare breakfast -- most often a dry roti with chai -- for her family. Afterward she accompanies her younger sister and mother to the workplace.

While others are out, Saleema picks up their used clothes and washes them in a basin of cold water placed on the floor. Later she will press the garments with an iron that has been heated with coals from the charcoal brazier on which she cooks.

She washes the dishes in the same basin and sweeps the floor. This is a task she repeats many times a day because dust permeates everything in the abode. Every day Saleema must also walk to a distant place to fetch the water. There she will lift a can of water onto her head in order to carry it home. This should be enough for the household's daily supply, but if it runs out she will have to go back for more.

On most days, her mother sends her to buy some pulse: stringy daal, perhaps some rice, and a bit of other essentials. She finds these things in the minimally stocked shop located in the streets of her neighbourhood. Saleema likes these trips because -- although play is foreign to her -- she can steal a few minutes to be with her ‘Sahailees’.

After awhile, Saleema picks up the things and brings them home. Then she prepares the evening meal. She always eats alone, usually late, sitting on the floor with a bowl of rice and ‘daal’. By 8:00 p.m. she is ready and free to go to sleep.

Her bed is a sheet on the floor. Cockroaches and other pests run unchecked over the floor. Vermin, attracted by the festering garbage heaps and sewage ditches that overflow in the rainy season, are commonplace in her locality.

Saleema cannot remember when she was sent into domestic servitude. She knows her father died when she was a child of about six. Saleema also recalls that she went to school. When asked what she would like most to do with her life, her face lights up: She would like to be a teacher.