Heroes emerge from bottom of the social heap

Located at the bottom of the urban social pyramid, ragpickers are the smelly boys in tattered clothes whom everyone quickly passes by. Even street dogs, sub-consciously aware of their lowly status and often confusing them for thieves, chase them in shabby bylanes. On Monday, one such ragpicker and a roadside vendor will be treated as heroes. Reason: their timely action saved dozens of lives in the Saturday bomb blast. Ragpicker Krishna and cloth seller Kundan detected live bombs and alerted the police. Police point out that if the live bombs had not been detected in time, the death toll from the blasts would have been close to 100.