Loose Change

Indian squatters sit together in a blanket. A rented blanket. 

In a Parking Lot near Jama Masjid in New Delhi, India.In a parking lot.

There are nearly 100 people in the square of dirt on the edge of the cotton-sellers' district in the Indian capital. All are asleep in handmade wooden cots jammed one against the other. Dozens more people sleep around a battered empty fountain nearby.

In a few hours, workers will haul away the cots and Meena Bazaar Park No. 2 will fill with cars. By 9 a.m. the overnight community will have disappeared. Its residents will carry their meager possessions in plastic shopping bags until nightfall, when the lot once again will turn into a makeshift outdoor motel.

Thousands struggle at the bottom of India's working class. These parking lots are cheap refuges in a city where many can't even afford to rent a  slum shanties. 

And we don't even look for the loose change  that's fallen in the cracks of the couch!