Wallah - a man, Walli - a woman - There are tea wallahs, laundry wallahs, rickshaw wallahs, Old Delhi wallahs. This is lovely photographic piece on Mumbai wallahs: www.cnngo.com/mumbai/play/streets-your-city-mumbais-pavement-purveyors-908254.

On Saturday we drove for a couple of hours through the old Delhi streets. Old Delhi is a little like the way East Germany used to be before re-unification: untouched since the second world war in many places. Old Delhi looks as though everything has decayed since Partition, 1947. Where once Mughul houses and courtyards stood is now a layrinth of narrow streets seething with bodies and wires strung between cobbled together makeshifts little stores. The fragrance of well -tended gardens replaced with constant assaults on the olfactory nerves. What was stunning in the midst of the litter and slums was that there were laundry wallahs doing big business there. Laundry was strung out back and forth over several 'blocks' and large pieces of white laundry laid out to dry on what I would have assumed was filthy pavement! Not at all keen on sending any of my laundry out to any wallah if that's where it is going to dry, but perhaps this is the laundry central for New Delhi? (Very grateful our suite comes with a washing machine!)

As we searched for somewhere to live two weeks ago we looked at several properties in the Defense Colony (another section of the city south east of the government center) and on the open street we saw an ironing wallah. He must have run an extension chord from someone's home and set up some kind of trestle table in a shady spot on the street. Households brought him their clean dry laundry to press in the open air. I don't think the hotel would tolerate that, but that's certainly an option I'd go for.