According to the World Health Organization, an IDU's full physical recovery can take up to three years. But "the craving never dies in the mind", Rajiv admits, squinting one eye from the smoke of another beedi.

"These people come from the lowest castes," Rajiv explains, "so the women don't have the social freedom to go to the wine shop or to the chemist like the men. A lot of them still have to stay inside with their heads covered. ... The husband doesn't give a fuck about the house, kids, but a woman will be more sensitive to the needs of the children, to taking care of the children. She may whore to make money, but she won't inject."

Either way, HIV/AIDS is here, whether it comes from the area's drug use or prostitution or whether it's transferred from one partner to another as a result of the drug use or prostitution. I accompany Sita to the nearby hospital, Babu Jagjivan Ram, to pick up the results of her HIV test. She's negative, but most women in the area, she tells me, have to sneak away to avail themselves of the free HIV testing at the hospital. Should they test positive, Sita says, they are rarely able to undergo the continued treatment required because they keep the results hidden from their families. Locals and aid workers say street junkies are not welcome at the hospital, unless, of course, it's to the separate building at the back where their corpses are incinerated.

The National AIDS Control Organization estimates the number of HIV-positive IDUs in India at eight percent of the population, but most involved feel the number in Delhi, especially in Jahangirpuri, will turn out to be much higher. As the first group to gather specific numbers, Sahara, in conjunction with other groups, has begun a two-year research project in five Delhi neighbourhoods suffering from endemic drug use, but until they're done, there are still no hard figures on how many IDUs there are in Jahangirpuri, or how many are HIV positive.

When I return to Sita's new centre, three more addicts, along with Urdip, have sought her out. They all sit against the concrete, their varying shoulder heights contributing to the wall's dark stripe. Like the boy whose mother approached Rajiv, these men now detoxing had the advantage of a home and relative nutrition, but they're getting old. They look dejected. They look ill. Their stories vary, but they overlap more. These men want to get clean for their families. They want to start working again.

• • • • •

Moti, one of the homeless addicts, squats under one of the pillars of the Metro line that runs down the middle of National Highway 1, wearing a once-black-and-white shirt, now all grey, once-grey pants now mostly black. He scratches at his left shoulder with a bloated right hand. No veins are visible, just a rough, scaly surface, like a series of closed scabs. He wobbles to his feet and crosses the southbound lanes into an alley adjacent to Mahendra Park. From a distance, the scene is typical of urban India, rubbish collected into little multicolored ghats between the pavement and the brick walls on either side, but here, among the candy wrappers and empty pouches of PassPass, are an equal number of plastic syringe wrappers, more empty bottles with syringe-friendly caps, and even more broken glass ampules. Clumps of human turds bake in the sun and the ammonia smell of piss is overpowering. There are no syringes, however, Moti determines. He's been rustling around trying to find one hidden in the detritus to use for his afternoon fix.