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went back to their hotels. The men beating up Santa were probably tourists. They were not street people. Street people would not be so rude as to make so much noise and wake up the rest of us.
    I hoped they finished their game soon. It was better to stay put at night instead of wandering around. It was too easy to step on something or someone in the dark streets.
    But then I heard the police sirens getting closer, and I decided not to hang around.
    The police didn’t usually bother me. I had been in Kolkata for a few months and I knew how to be invisible. Most people didn’t see me. I could stand right in front of tourists and ask for money or food and even they didn’t see me.
    I wasn’t worried about the police coming after me, but the other pavement-sleepers could be a problem. They were waking up all around me.
    Kolkata nights could be cold in December. I was afraid they would notice the warm blanket I had. I had borrowed it from the unlocked cupboard at the Metropole Hotel. They had warm blankets at that hotel. I had borrowed from there a few times, although usually from the laundry room before the blankets were folded and put away.
    I had on a red jacket, too, with a hood that kept my head warm. I had borrowed it from a pile of old clothes in the market when the stall owner wasn’t looking. I felt cozy and comfortable and wanted to stay that way.
    I planned to pass the blanket on to someone else in the morning, but there was still a lot of night to get through. I didn’t want anyone to borrow it from me before I was finished with it.
    I got up and moved away from the storefront where I had been sleeping. It was a store where foreign tourists went to sit at computers and breathe in cold air. During the day it could be a good spot to get money. If you kept your eyes and ears open, you could learn things, like how to sing bits of English songs that played on the radio. If I sang and danced a bit before I asked for money, they were more likely to give.
    Or if I told a bit of poetry.
    Kolkata has books. Lots of books. Some of them get torn and thrown away. I kept my eyes open and found part of a book that had poems in it – poems that were easy enough for me to read and learn.
    I memorised bits of the easiest ones. I didn’t need to learn a lot. No one expected much from a girl like me. I could say, ‘Oh, to be in England, now that spring is here,’ and tourists thought I was a genius.
    I picked up bits of other languages, too. In German I could say ‘Guten Tag,’ which means good day. In Japanese I could say ‘Sayonara,’ which means goodbye.
    Tourists were easy to impress.
    The phrase that made them really part with their money was ‘Welcome to Kolkata. Please give me money so I can go back to school.’
    A lot of tourists gave me rupees just for that. I spent their rupees on food.
    I had tried to go to school. I tried a few different ones.
    I would follow the girls in as they got out of their rickshaws and walked past the guard into the yard where they were playing with ropes and balls, their uniforms blue and white or red and white or green and white.
    The first time, the guard stopped me at the gate.
    The second time, I went in with a group when the guard was busy. I got into the schoolyard. A teacher threw me out.
    The third time, I got in through the gate, walked straight through the yard and into an empty classroom.
    It was beautiful. Clean and bright and colorful, with a whole piece of chalkboard on the wall and rows of small tables with chairs. I sat down in one of those chairs, pretending that I belonged, trying to be invisible.
    I was not invisible to the girl who owned the table. She came into the classroom and squealed and stamped her feet. She said I stank and, as the guard was dragging me away, cried that her chair was now dirty and where would she sit?
    But I didn’t tell any of that to the tourists. They were busy. They hardly stopped walking