Yerwada

The gong sounded twice in a day .

Two meals in a day , for two thousand inmates. 

They came shuffling , like hordes of insects. Skeletal frames , dressed in grey . Loose grey frocks , which bared their thin , bony legs and shoulders . Their bony , impassive faces , uniform in their collective misery. They all held a battered aluminium plate. It resembled them . Battered , bent and worn-out. Each was served gloopy grey slop , that leaked from the holes in their plates . It was eaten with fingers and licked from plates , like famished animals .

It was a singularly dismal place. They said it was a women’s shelter cum juvenile centre. It had all the appearance of a concentration camp . 

One of the most dismal places on the planet earth.