"DIN! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Tho- I-ve belted you an- flayed you, 
By the livin- Gawd that made you, 
You-re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"
The lines closing Kipling-s jingoist verse distract me fleetingly. The next moment I-m hooked by the cryptic crispness with which Sagir Sheikh states "1819". He has the date pat, rooted deep to his ancestry. "That was when my baap-daade from Haryana came here to practise our profession," he says, massaging the shoulder on which he hoists the goat-skin bag called mashaq.

Hand-stitched traditionally by tailors from Rajasthan, this basic tool of trade is what Sagir walks in loping gait with along narrow paths of Pydhonie and Dongri, towards the end of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Road. Like their father Allaudin, he and his brother Khanu represent an ancient water-carrying fraternity dubbed Bhishti, probably from the Urdu "behesht", meaning heaven. "Giving water to the thirsty is a blessed thing. He who performs the task earns a place in paradise," Khanu declares.