Ellen Barry wrote about a shadowy city with ethereal sleep merchants:

• New Delhi’s shelters can accommodate 18,000 people. Yet the homeless likely number more than 100,000.
• Enter sleep merchants. These people chalk out parts of the sidewalks and offer safe spaces for people to bunk.
• They pay off the police and street sweepers so that the sleepers aren’t disturbed. Pick pockets are also paid so that the only robberies abound are dreamt.
• Some are compassionate, offer blankets, and play a Bollywood movie so that clients can slowly drift into slumber.
• Others are more calculating and will more than quadruple nightly prices – to 50 Rupees ($0.73) – when a chill begins to settle in the dark.

Source: The New York Times