When I joined the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, I did not have a computer of my own. I soon realised, like everyone else, that a substantial amount of learning here would require a computer: I would have to read and find journal articles; write term papers and assignments; make presentations on powerpoint and friends on Orkut (later facebook); find time to watch movies (at least some of which were connected to academic courses) and documentaries; learn new softwares and the technique of productively wasting time by getting into pseudo-intellectual arguments – all of which required a computer. Thankfully, the department provided a Department Computing Facility (DCF), an air-conditioned room with the most advanced computers I had ever worked on, 19 inch flat screen et. al. The fact that an overgenerous PhD scholar called Nalin used to sit there till late in the night meant that all assignments could be completed just in time.

In the second semester, I fought with my parents to buy a laptop, which, as expected, did not contribute much to my grades, but instead allowed me explore the depths of several Tera Bytes of stuff shared on the institute Local Area Network. The laptop served me well till about a year and a half, but went Kaput on a rainy day, after rain water miraculously found its way inside the laptop bag. Devastated, I had no option but to return to the DCF. There were assignments to be done, projects to be submitted, and movies to be seen. This continued till I went to Germany for an exchange semester, where I saved some money from my meagre scholarship, and bought a laptop again. Buying the laptop meant that very little was left for basic expenses and that most travelling plans had to be shelved. Still, it was worth the sacrifice, I thought.

Except that two months later, the laptop fell from my study-table, and its 15” screen got damaged. It still would work, but the screen would be blank. Thankfully, my German university also provided a similar facility as the DCF at the department, and work did not suffer much. I made very good friends with a mechanical engineer from South Korea, who treated me with countless sandwiches he got from home, and whose Master’s dissertation I proofread and edited (which was in English, a language he had little mastery over). Nevertheless, the laptop was repaired when I got back to India (at half the cost it would have taken in Europe), except that (yes, again!) in February 2011, it was stolen from the computer lab in my department. Most of the work of this Master’s project was on that laptop, and I had no back-ups. 5 years of collected papers, articles, movies and music were lost (some of which were so difficult to find), a loss that I would perhaps never recover from. I sometimes want to listen to a particular song, only to later realise that I no longer have it, and that is inaccessible on the internet. The same with many academic papers, which were requested from friends who had access to them (IIT Madras, despite its robust online journal access library, still lacks access to some important journal collections, such as ProjectMuse, LexisNexis or WileyOnline and many articles in even the repositories we subscribe to are behind pay walls). Thankfully, I could still manage to complete this thesis and do other important tasks thanks to the computer lab that the department had generous funded. At no point in my time have I been grateful to public facilities.

While doing research for this thesis, I have often thought about public facilities such as computer labs and their ability to provide “protection” to people who are careless with their belongings (or those who often seem to be suffering from terrible bad luck) like me. There are many more who need such facilities in the department not because they are careless but because they cannot afford computers or a laptop. One could, in principle, attack such facilities on various grounds. For instance, it is easy to argue that these facilities, with so many computers and air conditioners are a waste of taxpayer’s money. One could also argue that if someone lost their computer or could not afford it, too bad, but that’s how life is: harsh. Or point out to the fact that students just play games, chat and facebook, thus wasting these precious facilities (which, to be fair, is not uncommon). Or ask if this form of assistance can be given in a more “efficient” way – as full or partial grants to poorer students with meritorious grades, or restricting entry to the labs for only a few who “deserve” and “really need” these facilities (thus reducing the number of PCs that would need to be provided). Indeed, these are important questions, and none of them have easy answers (hopefully, this study would help to answer some of these questions in a slightly different domain). There is much to be improved here, and we are already involved in a protracted debate on whether current ways of social protection are adequate or enough or to how best to achieve the goals we seek to achieve. But what cannot be denied, however we may enable everyone to have access to computers in an academic department (or provide social protection in a society) that these facilities are important, and that they do enable careless souls like me to write theses like these.

We had already brought rice, dal and mustard oil, and we were ready to pay a small amount of money for cooking. It was getting dark. We met a nice looking woman, who was briefed of our situation. She asked us, “So, what’s your caste”. Growing stiff, I asked “How does that matter?”. I said to Saad in English, let’s go to the other hamlet. Saad, who knew me well by then, cut me. He said to her, “His name is Aashish Gupta, and I am Abhay Joshi.” She happily agreed to cook for us.

Later on, she came to know that Paroma was a Kashmiri Brahmin. Her behaviour took a radical turn after that. Not only did she cook potatoes for us, using her own supplies, she was quite keen to stuff us with food. In the end, she touched Paroma’s feet. This, despite us trying to explain to her that such things as caste should be irrelevant, “what matters is how people are,” and that “everyone is equal”.

That same year, I met a girl from St. Xaviers college in Mumbai who had come to do fieldwork. She was born and brought-up in Ahmadabad, but in 2002, she and her parents had to leave the city. One fine day, a stone was thrown at their apartment’s window, and given what was happening in the state, they packed their bags for the next train to Mumbai. Her parents, as you would expect, were middle class professionals, who thought it was best to leave at such a time. They left their apartment and most of the belongings as it is, entrusting it with their neighbours. This is the only time I have met someone affected by communal violence, even if she was affected in a not-so-violent (but still significant) way. I didn’t ask her if she went back after that, or what happened to the apartment. I had become too engrossed in answering the question, “if this was what happened to the rich, what would have happened to the not-so-economically-fortunate?”

This summer, Althaf, my classmate, spent a substantial amount of time in cities and villages of Madhya Pradesh. Althaf found early that telling his real name leads to a high rate of non-response, and sometimes hostility  to his eager questions. In a meeting in a village, he informed villagers that his name was Althaf, and that he was from Kerala. A local leader quickly rose to explain to the rest of the villagers, “Muslims in Kerala are patriotic. Not like here.” Very soon, he found himself using Hindu names, in order to be able to do the survey. Althaf used names he read in newspapers, of IIT toppers,  though all of them had a tendency to begin with an A.

All these instances, simple yet common, have led to a realisation that I am still not comfortable with. I knew quite early on from my reading that deep social divisions exist within our society, that Muslims might be discriminated against in ways which are subtle and not-so-subtle; that the task of creating an inclusive society is easier said than done. I am also aware that while all my examples are from rural parts of India, such divisions can be very prevalent in urban parts of the country. My grandmother for instance, did not serve Muslims in her house, and if a vessel was touched by a Muslim or a dalit, it would be thrown the next day.

However, seeing these things on my own has led to a growing sense of discomfort, about my own “privileged-position”, as well as the difficulty in challenging these divisions.  Solutions look easy from  distance, but we realise how incapable and weak we are, as soon as we start working to eliminate these divisions.

Another question that has no easy resolution is that of research ethics: when with a casteist woman or a communal man, what should I do? Should I let it be, which would be pragmatic from the point of research, but irresponsible as a citizen? Should I argue it out? In my first year of college, I would have told Althaf to use his real name and confront these divisions head on, told my friend from Mumbai that she and her parents should have remained in Ahmadabad and fought for their rights , or would have gone to the far off dalit tola and eaten there. I still want to, but I realise that it’s not that easy for any of us.

(I am thankful to Althaf, Mahtab Rakesh, Saad and others (unnamed) for help in writing this one. Thanks!)

Perhaps now, 10 years after their debate started, we need to point out a particular passage from Premchand to both of them. It appears in the story, “The Road to Salvation.”

It  is a mystery  why there  is so much hatred  among  the good as there  is  love among the wicked. A  scholar at the sight of another  scholar, a  holy man at  the  sight of another  holy man, and a poet at the sight of another  poet  tend  to  sizzle with  animosity…But if a  thief  sees a  fellow  thief  in  trouble,  he  always extends  a  helping  hand.  All men  hate  wickedness, so  the  wicked  always  love  each  other.  The  entire world  praises  virtue,  so the  virtuous  are  forever squabbling  with each other. What  does a thief gain by killing another  thief?  Contempt.  What does  a  scholar  gain  by  insulting  another  scholar? Fame.

Both of them could, then, shed some light on this mystery.  Maybe in the process they will realize that there is a better way to debate, than in the way they have in the past 10 years?

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif Thursday said that floods unleashed large-scale devastation across the province but along with misery and pain it also open up new opportunities.

During his meeting with British Deputy High Commissioner Dr. Peter Tibber here, Shahbaz Sharif said that model villages are being constructed with the financial assistance of philanthropists.

The British Deputy High Commissioner said that his country will continue support for the rehabilitation of the flood-affectees.

Apart from the ludicrous headline “Floods open new opportunities” (opportunties for whom, sir?), compare the concerns of the British Deputy High Commissioner and the Cheif Minister of Pakistan. The DHC supports rehabilitation of the flood affectees, while all the CM is interested is building Model Villages.

Anyone who has any background in rural development understands what “model villages” mean: One village in a very large area (say, a district) which has all the facilities (school, primary health centre, rehabilitation and housing here) while all other villages are left on their own! I thought only NGOs do this kind of work.

Over the past month or so, “Time To Act” volunteers have met more than 60 MPs, from political parties of every possible hue, from diverse regions of the country and with very different orientations. One of them hung images of Bharat Mata and MS Golwakar in his home while another one from UP had a home office which looked like that of a high-end technology enterprise. An MP came to talk in his pyjamas (wearing nothing above the waist), while another one was a well-infored gynaecologist from Gujarat.  It is common to dismiss students in India’s elite colleges and universities as elitists themselves, but through “Time to Act”, they have creatively used a democratic space that is available but seldom utilised, to push the concerns of some of the most marginalised sections of our society.

The minutes of these meetings were compiled recently (and are also available on the facebook page of this initiative.) These “notes” give us some remarkable insights about the food security debate (while also telling us important things about democratic processes and outcomes in India). In this post, I’ll try to glean some insights from these notes of meetings by “Time to Act”, consisting of meetings with as many as 57 MPs.

A contentious point in the debate on the “Food Security Act” is whether food entitlements should be universal or targeted to those who possess a BPL card. The Agriculture Ministry (one of the more disoriented ministries), the Planning Commission (a rather miserly organisation) and the government in general are vehement that they want a targeted PDS. Do our MPs agree? Not quite. A third fully supported universalisation. Consider Arjun Singh Meghwal, an ex-IAS BJP MP from Bikaner, who said that the process of targeting is corrupt, and that it really is a matter of chance who gets selected and who doesn’t.

Or consider Vilas Baburao Muttemwar, a congress MP from Nagpur, who countered the fiscal conservative rhetoric of the planning commission by saying that “A universal PDS is possible”. Pradeep Tamta (Almora, INC) concurred – “Universalisation is the only way forward” and Abani Roy from West Bengal’s revolutionary socialist party joined the chorus: “This government is not for the poor, it is only for the rich.”

We managed to change the views of 16 MPs, who initially were sceptical of the idea of universalisation. Thus, when volunteers first met Chonsheng Chang, Lok Sabha MP from Nagaland, he said that “A Universal PDS is not possible.” When it was mentioned that Tamil Nadu has a universal PDS, his reply was, “I do not believe that!” Volunteers showed him websites of the Tamil Nadu civil supplies corporation, as also those related to the PDS in Chattisgarh.

Ultimately, he did realise that the planning commission is a stingy organisation, and asked, “If they don’t have money for the poor, who do they have money for?!” Of course, it is not entirely possible to change the views of MPs in a small meeting, and there is also the possibility that MPs were just being politically correct, and we shouldn’t be naive in thinking that if they say the right things, they actually mean it.

About 11 of 57 (see Graph 1) were completely opposed to the idea of a universal PDS. Dr. Ram Prakash of the INC dismissed universal PDS as too theoretical (ignoring the fact that it practically exists in some states) and made a universal claim, “people don’t want to work”. Mr. Shanavas from Kerala (INC) thinks that only 25% of the people in the country are poor, and glorified our impressive economic growth in the past few years. Aditya Nath Jogi, from the BJP thought that the idea is bakwaas (useless), and reminded volunteers that they should speak in Shudd Hindi (Pure Hindi) (Rajnath Singh, a senior leader of the also BJP did the same).

Another big debate is that of comprehensiveness. The Right to Food Campaign has argued that given the nature and extent of malnutrition in the country, entitlements under the PDS would not be enough. The PDS cannot tackle malnourishment in children under six, iron deficiency and anaemia, because of which lactating and pregnant mothers need other interventions to ensure nutrition for themselves and their children. Thus we need to include children’s right to food (through the ICDS) and mother’s entitlements. The nutrition needs of the sick, the elderly, vulnerable groups as well as those of disabled are hardly met by the PDS in its current form.

While it is easier to convince someone (MPs included) that the right to food should be comprehensive (compared to convincing them that the act should be universal), the debate on comprehensiveness seems to have received much less attention than it deserves, getting lost in the noisy debate on universalisation. 21 MPs supported comprehensiveness, 5 agreed to support after discussions, while another 13 were still confused, but did change their stand against comprehensiveness. Only 3 (Graph 2) refused to listen to reason: A very significant finding, I think.

Tamil Nadu’s  Adhi Shankar (DMK) informed us that the TN government is already giving bananas and eggs in Mid-Day Meals (Tamil Nadu introduced the scheme in the 1960s, but the rest of the country adopted it only after a hard legal and political battle fought by the Right to Food Campaign), and emphasised the importance of preventing lapses in hygiene and food quality. Smt. Helen Davidson, from the same state and party, wanted the act to explicitly make the District Commissioner accountable to implement nutrition-related schemes. Tamil Nadu pays, according to her, Rs. 6000 to pregnant women, compared to Rs. 500 elsewhere. We did try to convince these DMK MPs to push for similar demands for the rest of the country. It will at least be easier for them, DMK being a part of the ruling coalition.

A big worry, however is that MPs seem unaware of the nutritional emergency India’s citizens have been facing for the past decades. In an article, economist Reetika Khera, had written that “Most serious though, is the fact it has not occurred to any of the MPs we met so far that the country faces nothing short of a “nutritional emergency”, with a bad record on nutrition indicators, which are hardly improving over time.”

As Graph 3 shows, very few (8) MPs are aware of these indicators. About 18 MPs are at best acquainted, having only a faint or vague idea of nutrition indicators. A large number (19) just needs to be shaken up, and a small minority are ready to question even data collected by the National Family Health Survey. At least some MPs realise this distrust of hard numbers and lack of awareness in MPs of our pathetic record on nutrition. They urged us to make our representatives in parliament alert and aware – Mr. Gadhvi (INC, Gujarat) told us, “I am with you!”, while Mr. Charan Das Mahant, said “Only 5% of the MPs are interested in the country, and only 10% know about India. The rest are looting the country, or sleeping. We are with you, you have to wake those up who are sleeping.”

Thank you, Sir! We are trying our very best.

PS: A version of this appeared on CounterCurrents. Check it out here.

As a student of Development Studies, I often end up meeting/hearing people engaged in what might be called Development Practice, the task of actually doing development (contrast them to people like me, who are supposed to study development). People from NGOs, Social Movements, Foundations, MFIs, Commercial Business, sometimes government and particularly from “social enterprises”.

IIT Madras has a very strong cell for encouraging innovation through entrepreneurship called C-Tides, has incubated several companies through RTBI, offers a minor in Social entrepreneurship – as a result, the number of lectures and events organised around (social) entrepreneurship is quite large. Often, these people are doing remarkable work, and there is much to learn from their particular experiences.

Often, in trying to gain legitimacy for the work they are doing, these practitioners tend to criticise the ‘others’. They could very well try to gain legitimacy by explaining the value of their work or by telling us the odds they face in their work. Instead, NGOs seek to talk about how the government is useless and can never deliver. Pro-privatisation people will give examples from the License Raj and how 1991 solved everything. So, we need privatisation in development.

Social entrepreneurs will have a truck with the government of course, but also with NGOs, whose work is “just not scalable”, “charity”, “perverse” even. They just want to perpetuate poverty, apparently, to keep themselves in business. SEs have also started having an issue with mainstream business now, and yesterday I saw a poster which asked, “Why Sell Your Soul, When You Can Be A Social entrepreneur?” Social movements will demonize the government, but also “funded agencies”, an euphemism for anybody in the development sector which is not government and which is not financed with members’ contributions (like movements themselves).

I am willing to accept some of these criticisms. It hardly needs to be argued that the government is corrupt and inefficient (though not irreconcilably so!). Neither do we need to prove that businesses cause much damage to the environment and people, and pull strings to get away. Many NGOs and Social Enterprises are fly-by-night operators, with bad plans and schemes. As such, NGOs and Social Movements can be inefficient and unprofessional, utterly ideological as well. What I don’t get is the next step this argument from practitioners takes – that their kind of work is the only legitimate people in development, that hence, all others should shut up and pull shutters down.

A lot of Social Entrepreneurs are libertarians, who would be happy only with the most limited government. Social Entrepreneurs, according to them, can solve any problem, from climate change to poverty to rural health care and energy, from quality education to hunger to sanitation. Thus, Prof. Anil Gupta, a pioneer in identifying rural innovations from IIMA claimed in an interview, that if the government will “tap rural innovations, you won’t need NREGA in five years”. Interesting proposition that, except that rural innovations can’t take root in such a short span of time through the course of such a large country and population (if they did, it would be some kind of a revolution the world has not seen till now), and even if they could, there will still be required some form of universal social security for people.

Similar arguments are made by Microfinance Institutions (Indeed, just two years back, Micro Finance was touted as The solution to poverty), by those who encourage vouchers and school choice (for the record, most students in Rural India go to a public school, and private schools simply don’t exist), by social entreprenuers who want everything to run on “decentralised and sustainable” energy, or who think that the solution to poverty will only come through innovation and entreprenuership, by NGOs and foundations and by social movements. Funnily, The only people who don’t have this kind of monopolising tendency is the government, which actually seems happy to privatise or outsource activities to NGOs.

And yet, it seems to me, that each of these kind of practitioners have important roles to play, and that there is a room for everyone. Our development challenges seem to be quite big, with much need for innovation in a variety of sectors, including the government. None of these kinds of development practice seem to be without problems, though none of them insurmountable. In each kind, there are some very successful examples, and a large number of failures as well.

Could these varied organisations then, please, understand that there might be a legitimate role for the government, and recognise the important role it does and can play in the lives of people? Understand that there might be different forms of organising development activity, some more effective than others, but some more equitable? Criticise where they feel there is a need to, but also learn to learn and let live?

On November 26, 2008, 9 attackers held the city of Mumbai to hostage using a variety of tactics which included shootings and bombings, killing at least 175 people, and injuring another 300. After the incident, I saw the custom message of a very good friend, “What the Fuck.  Time to Nuke the shit out of Pakistan”. After sometime, he changed it to “Pakistan, Fuck You. No, Nuke You.” Two classmates and friends actually weighed the costs and benefits of attacking Pakistan with after that. Calling it a heated debate would be an understatement.

In the year 2007, South Asia was devastated by multiple floods. The World Bank, Oxfam, The BBC, Reuters, New Scientist, The DFID, all covered the issue extensively. Even the New York Times carried a report. 20 Million people had been displaced, another 30 million ‘affected’. The UNICEF had called it “the worst flooding in living memory.” But did media in South Asia bother?

Out of a total 53 links referenced in the Wiki page, only 2 referenced Indian news sites. Bias of the guy who wrote the wiki entry? Probably. I will be glad if you can point out an South Asian media article which covers the issue in its entirety. I tried searching, but couldn’t find any. I might be accused of being condescending or patronising, but very few of my batchmates even know that something like this happened. I shouldn’t blame them for the faults of the Indian media. There was hardly any systematic or overall coverage of he floods in the south asian press. Whatever coverage was there, was of events – “19 killed in Bihar”. “Floods devastate Patna”. One was about how flights in Delhi airport had been affected and were delayed.

On April 6, 2010, in Dantewada, Southern Chattisgarh, Naxalites killed 76 CRPF Jawans, in what has been the deadliest strike on Indian security forces by the Maoists. After the attack, another very good friend from the state had the custom message: “Fuck the Naxals”. I also saw the BJP’s war cry slogan, “Fight to the Finish” in three custom messages. No, I did not bother asking him why, or the impact on ordinary tribal people of this fight to the finish. It was the hostel nights season, and no-one really had time.

In a class intended for 4th Year students of Development Studies, a very well-respected professor from my department made the statement,

“This 35 Kilograms of Rice through the PDS is just making people lazy. In every village of Orissa, you will find that people just play cards. You see, they don’t have to work anymore, their food is guaranteed.” A batchmate said the same thing two days later: “Dude, I was in Delhi, and I met this guy who is doing his PhD from Oxford. Damn stud guy. He told me that people are not willing to work in Kalahandi in Orissa – precisely because of what our prof said.” (India’s Public Distribution System, in theory, entitles subsidised grain to poor families in India)

The fact is (yes, the fact is) that people die of starvation in Orissa. There is no systematic assessment of the number of deaths per year, except stray media reports, like this one, which reports 50 starvation deaths in just one district, Balangir. Instead of owning up and improving the functioning of the PDS in the Balangir (Balangir lies in the notorious Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput (KBK) region), the district administration chose to call it deaths caused by Malaria. Two out of 5 poor households do not have a BPL card (the card which gets them the subsidised grain) because of a flawed BPL survey in 2002. Those who do have a card find that Fair Price Shops dont open for weeks (sometimes months), that most of the grain they are entitled to is sold in the open market, that when the shop does open, they cannot get enough money to buy the grain and that by the time they reach the shop, it gets closed. In 2007, 40.9% of the children in Orissa were under-weight (compared to 24.6% in Punjab) and the Infant Mortality Rate was 9.1 per 100 (compare it to Kerala’s 1.6).

Development Economist Jean Dreze did an analysis of articles and reports in the Media on issues of Hunger, nutrition and health. He wrote, “The Hindu, one of the finest English-medium dailies, publishes two opinion articles every day on its editorial page.  In a recent count of these opinion articles over a period of six months (January to June 2000), it was found that health, nutrition, education, poverty, gender, human rights and related social issues combined accounted for barely 30 out of 300 articles.  Among these 300 articles, not one dealt with health or nutrition.” Further, “When I repeated the exercise for the period of January-June 2003, I did find an article dealing with health – it was about the SARS crisis in China!”

On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked 4 commercial Airliners in the United States. Two of them were crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City, killing 2995, and injuring more than 6000. 10 days after this tragedy, the US President George W. Bush gave an address to a Joint Address of the US Congress. “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” Also, “Any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

On March 29, 2010, an article appeared in the Outlook Magazine. Written by Arundhati Roy, it was called “Walking with the Comrades.” Indeed, Arundhati had spent a substantial time walking with the comrades, one of the few people to bother doing so. She wrote,

“Over the past five years or so, the governments of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal have signed hundreds of MoUs with corporate houses, worth several billion dollars, all of them secret, for steel plants, sponge-iron factories, power plants, aluminium refineries, dams and mines. In order for the MoUs to translate into real money, tribal people must be moved. Therefore, this war.”

Arundhati did not bother to explain further, or provide evidence. She might have been true, but I have no way to find out from her article.

Many of us, students of Development Studies, were quite surprised with the findings of the Arjun Sengupta committee that 836 Million Indians lived below Rs 20 a day. “Dude, how is that possible? What is the poverty line set at, then?” After sometime, we came to terms with the fact the finding is probably true (The number of people living below PPP $2 Dollars in India throws up a similar number.) My classmate recently said, “I still find it hard to believe. In fact, I don’t want to believe it.”

My point in posting these instances? I think that when we talk, raise an important point,  discuss issues, we are missing something vital. Warmth. When we say “Fuck The Naxals” or “You are either with us, or against us”, we exhibit some kind of smugness, for we are not concerned about the lives of millions of other citizens of the world, but only with our rage. We generate heat, without either light, or warmth.

On the other hand, it is equally possible to be concerned about certain things (warmth), and be angry about them (heat), without having some kind of a reality check, or without bothering to explain the facts to others, even if you know them. Arundhati Roy writes like that. If I am not acquainted with the issue, I find it extremely difficult to follow what she wants to say.

The Indian Media’s reporting of many pertinent issues that affect the poor, such as hunger, health, or livelihoods leaves much to be desired. They don’t generate light. Indeed, had coverage of such issues been decent, it would have been possible to turn the heat on the government, for instance in the case of floods in 2007. Because media coverage was so wanting, governments could happily ignore this issue.

When we don’t bother about light in the way we discuss and argue about pertinent issues, we patronise. Without warmth, we polarize. And without heat, we often end up defeating our causes. All three are necessary. So let there be warmth, light and heat! Oh, and yes, I think that the order is important. Warmth, then light, and if required, heat.

While coming back from the institute on the first day, I sat next to a young lady and a girl aged three or four, in the bus. Looking at their clothes, it was easy to guess that they were poor. The girl’s hair hadn’t been washed for a long time, and they were probably returning from work. As the bus went past Forum, the girl, asked a question in Hindi, “Woh kya hai?” (What’s that?) The lady replied, “Usey mall kehte hain. Jo ameer hote hain, woh wahan cheezein khareed sakte hain” (It’s called a Mall. Those who are rich, can buy things there.)

The girl, amused, asked, “Achha, toh kya jo ameer hote hain, unko aam roshni mein dikhta nahin hai kya?” (Okay, so are the rich unable to see in normal light?)

Hunk Sends a Teddy. Now why would any hunk want to do that?