India, Oct. 22 -- Most of the day, she is lying silently on the pavement, her head flopped down. Behind her, over the same hours, he stays super-busy rustling out one round of tea after another. The young man stands by his gas burner, his arms a blur with the stirring and pouring of chai for his customers. While she occasionally curls deeper into herself, lowering her face towards her paws. Neither looks at the other. But it seems each might miss the other if one were not there.

The dog is Lucy. The tea man is Jawed. All the other people living and/or working on this stretch of a Central Delhi road-side call her Lucy too. Jawed thinks she must be around two. The tea stall anyway is new. Jawed opened it this month, having earlier worked a...