Poetic prose

Anees Jung writes in poetic prose: she uses literary devices to make us feel the misery of these children, not just know about it.

• Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration. 'Garbage to them is gold': garbage is not really gold, but it shows how much it means to the ragpickers.
• A metaphor says that one thing is another, carrying over one of its qualities. A 'web of poverty' traps people the way a spider's web traps an insect.
• A simile compares two things using 'like' or 'as'. Savita's hands move 'like the tongs of a machine' as she makes bangles.
• Irony is a contrast between what is said and what is real. A ragpicker named Saheb-e-Alam, 'lord of the universe', who owns almost nothing, is an example. So is a fire station that catches fire, or a police station that gets burgled: the very opposite of what you would expect.

Other phrases are not meant literally either: calling ragpicking a 'fine art' is ironic, not praise.

A quick test: if there is 'like' or 'as', it is a simile; if it simply says one thing is another, it is a metaphor.