Winter

A single icicle juts out in front of my window, dripping slowly in the bright sunshine. Spring is just around the corner. I carefully make my way down the sidewalks covered in snow, soon to be packed into an uncrossable sheet of ice. I can't help thinking that winter this year has been worse than the last. My gloved hands return to my coat pockets, still stinging gently under the light wool. The trees are still bare; the colors of fall a many months away. For now, I wait patiently for warmer weather, for spring and then summer. Until then I pray that we've received the last heavy snowfall for the season.

Of Gut-Wrenching Poverty

Life in India is full of contradictions, as any visitor to the country will tell you. For someone living in India, however, reconciling these contradictions is essential for survival. It is hard if not impossible, to be faced with crippling poverty on a daily basis and not feel an overwhelming sense of sadness and guilt.
My home state of Maharashtra was recently contemplating changing the rules so that taxi permits would only be issued to persons who had lived in the state for at least fifteen years and can "read and write marathi (the local language)". The move is primarily aimed at keeping migrant workers from poorer states from acquiring local jobs. In a country where a vast number of people are illiterate, where we have failed to provide our poorest and most vulnerable sections of society with a minimum standard of living, where large sections of the population go hungry, this is what the Government imagines up. Perhaps we should soon expect a set of minimum qualifications that all of the urban poor must meet if they want to subsist amongst the more affluent. The irony is not lost on me.