Fatima Bibi's hotel on the tracks opens at 8 a.m. and shuts down at noon. And it has a faithful clientele of beggars, pickpockets, platform dwellers, porters and drug addicts, who troop in for an inexpensive bite.

"I have over 200 regular customers apart from the flying ones.

The number of customers is increasing with such rapidity that I have employed my two daughters and two sons as household helps and hotel bearers.

They too bring excess food from their workplace to meet the demand," Fatima said.

Fatima and her clients sit under an open sky, sometimes putting up plastic sheets on bamboo poles as makeshift shelter from the hot sun or rain.

It goes without saying that the reason behind the humongous success of this 'hotel' is the compromise between hunger and poverty.

"We hardly earn Rs 25 a day. Surely, we can't afford to spend more than Rs 5 a day on lunch and dinner.

Here we can eat to the fullest for Rs 3, that's what matters. Whether the food is leftover or slightly rotting, we don't care," said Chanchal, a beggar at the station.

Some customers have just a bowlful of boiled rice water available for 50 paise.

However, Fatima manages to make about Rs 800 a day from her 'hotel'.

But just as there are no free lunches in this world, it seems there are no free businesses either - not a day passes without Fatima giving bribes to the railway police.

"Every day I have to pay the police personnel Rs 100 to allow me run my business peacefully.

But policemen are like chameleons. On strict days they just kick my customers and me out of the tracks.

However we don't give up. These tracks are ours and the next day we are back to our old place again," said Fatima.