ARMED with a wooden club and a torch, Ramesh Mukadam goes rat hunting every night. He hunts his prey in narrow, stinking alleyways infested with millions of rodents in the western Indian city of Bombay, writes Rahul Bedi.
He wears no shoes as he slinks through piles of garbage and along walls of godowns (warehouses) in the city's southern suburbs.
He fears he may disturb the vicious bandicoots, grown enormously fat, feeding off tonnes of rubbish thrown daily into the streets.
After an eight hour shift chasing and clubbing these bandicoots to death, Mukadam, a veteran of Bombay's sewers and refuse heaps, turns in the expected average of 25 rats to his employers, the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC). In exchange he gets 55 rupees or £1.
Whenever Mukadam is unable to make up his nightly quota, he, "borrows" the shortfall from one of 85 fellow Night Rat Killers - or NRK's - with a bigger bag.
"Even now when I fail to strike a rat dead at the first blow, it attacks, viciously sinking its teeth into me," says Mukadam.
Being a casual employee he is not entitled to sick leave and after years of honing his skills is wary of absenting himself, afraid of being replaced by scores wanting to become NRK's.
Unemployment in Bombay, India's financial capital and most expensive city with a constantly expanding population, of over 20 million, is high.
According to municipal officials over 20,000 people, 40 per cent of whom are graduates, recently applied for 71 vacancies as NRKs.
The rat killers are often exposed to infection. They have to take their share of dead and bleeding rats home since the municipal offices where they deposit their nightly catch do not open till late in the morning.
Bombay's municipal corporation has employed rat killers for decades but segregated them into two categories - 137 permanent staff who work the day shift and 85 Night Rat Killers.
The permanent staff work in relatively safe conditions but the NRKs take the risks and are considered more "productive" simply because they have to work harder to achieve a fixed target. Otherwise they face dismissal.