内容摘要：with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Atmaram eats at the New Delhi shelter. (AP Photo/David Goldman)His shower is done and Atmaram is given fresh clothes and served a hot meal on a metal tray before being shown to a bed in a communal room. The shelter’s staff has repeated this routine many times but none utters what they know to be true: Few who arrive here will ever see their families again.

“They say, ‘He’ll come back one day,’” says Saurabh Bhagat, the 35-year-old leader of SHEOWS, the organization his father founded. “But almost none of them ever come back.”The scars from an infestation of maggots are seen on the leg of Sikander, whose age is unknown, as he lays on his bed at the Garhmukteshwar shelter. (AP Photo/David Goldman)The scars from an infestation of maggots are seen on the leg of Sikander, whose age is unknown, as he lays on his bed at the Garhmukteshwar shelter. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Though most who are taken in by SHEOWS come from New Delhi’s streets and spend time in one of the organization’s city shelters, in time most end up here, at its largest site in Garhmukteshwar.The center’s staffers are a stand-in for absent families and are quick with a caring touch or extra helping of food. And as caregivers’ years here pass, each amasses memories of cases that haunt them.

The old man whose leg was so infested with maggots he spent a month hospitalized. The woman who looked like a skeleton when she was found shivering in the bushes on a winter day that would be her last. A man with dementia often seen crying but unable to say why.

“How can children do this?” the home’s manager, 30-year-old Naved Khan, asks in disbelief.People take cover from rain at San Felipe Church in Portobelo, Panama, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, a day before the Black Christ festival. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

People take cover from rain at San Felipe Church in Portobelo, Panama, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, a day before the Black Christ festival. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)Pilgrims joke around with water after crawling to San Felipe Church to honor the Black Christ in Portobelo, Panama, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, during a festival celebrating the iconic statue that was found on the shore in 1658. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Pilgrims joke around with water after crawling to San Felipe Church to honor the Black Christ in Portobelo, Panama, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, during a festival celebrating the iconic statue that was found on the shore in 1658. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)A woman drips candle wax on Valentin Solis as part of his penance, as pilgrims make their way, some crawling, to the San Felipe Church in Portobelo, Panama, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, during a festival celebrating the iconic Black Christ statue that was found on the shore in 1658. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)