Mohan says that he is fifteen, but he isn’t quite sure. He comes from a small village in Uttar Pradesh, a deprived state in Northern India. Mohan found a job in Kanchan Kunj, a district in North Delhi, in a hangar where glass bottles are recycled. Used bottles are delivered by trucks, sorted according to their brand and colour, handwashed and eventually sold to a bottling factory. Mohan is in charge of washing the bottles: he immerses the bottles one by one into a pool of soapy water, gives them a quick scrub and peels off the labels. He is paid by the bottle and did not stop scrubbing while we were chatting. When I returned to the factory a few days later to give him a printed copy of his portrait, I found him in the same position, squatting over his pool, and he barely took the time to wipe his hands before running to his older brother to show him the photograph.
