45,000 Rupees

Along the back roads of the industrial part of Dharavi, you'll see some amazing things. For example, people collect scraps of all kinds, from discarded inkpens to old broken computer keyboards to spare mechanical parts. The workers there dump these scraps into incredibly loud machines that tear them apart, melt them down, chew them up, and spit them out in their most basic forms -- sheets and pellets of plastic, metal, and other materials.

When I came upon these bags of what must be hundreds and hundreds of meters of used audio tape in a back alley outside a machine shop, this man leaned out of his doorway, pointed to them, and said, "You see this? 45,000 rupees." I wasn't sure if he was making an offer, trying to sell the scrapped tape to me, or just making sure I understood the hidden value of what other people might consider trash. Either way, I just said "thanks," and moved on.