1. Ambrosia for the Poor


She
drank until her throat was tired of swallowing, and even then she
could barely tear herself away. The faint sound of her nameless
brother crying in the distance brought her back to reality. She had
dropped him on the ground, but the wondrous plastic floor had
broken his short fall perfectly. She picked him up and held him up to
the gushing nipple



2. Lost in the Crowd


Sunita and Mandra were swept along and seperated by the crowd as they
moved closer to get a better look at the elaborately decorated
machine. Sunita looked up at the politician's image towering above
her, and imagined that he was smiling at her.





3. Planned Parenthood


Anil laughed along with the others at the general manager's crude joke. While he was
somewhat disturbed by the thought of the hapless masses filing into the furnace to be
converted into electricity, it struck him that it might not be a bad idea to take advantage
of the widespread popularity of cremation.





4. Trapped


Sunita started on the second chipatee, painfully aware that it would not go far
towards stilling her hunger. She glanced hungrily at the nearest nipple on the wall
opposite her. She was quickly loosing interest in the conversation, and the delicious
chipatees served only to stimulate her appetite. After she finished the second one,
Sunita could no longer resist the temptation.






1. Ambrosia for the Poor


Swept along by the crowd, Sunita ran as fast as she could. Over her
left shoulder she could see the bright lights of the machines as they
flattened the ramshakle houses made of plastic, metal, mud and dung,
that had, until recently, been their homes. In her arms, she carried
her small baby brother, who had no name. Her mother died a few days
ago, while giving birth to him. A woman screamed behind her, as the
machines crushed her legs, and then her spine. Sunita ran faster.

For a while now, they had known this would happen. Rumors that the
machines were clearing out the shanty-towns had been reaching them for
months. And yesterday, they had watched with fascination, as the
smaller machines drove through their allies, announcing that new
dwellings would be built for them, and that they should temporarily
clear the area. All but a few had ignored the warnings. Almost
nobody trusted the machines.

As they reached the outer edges of the slums, the panic began to
subside. The machines had stopped clearing, as there was nothing left
to clear. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but dusty
plains, with a lonely tree growing here and there. Plenty of room for
them to begin rebuilding their suburb.

Sunita slept on the dusty ground, wedged in between an old sardarji
and his daughter. Her nameless brother woke numerous times, but was
kept quiet by the generous glands of the young woman, who shared her
milk between her own child and Sunita's brother. Sunita's mother had
been generous during her life, and the people did not forget. The
sounds of the machines, churning out sanitized plastic living quarters
did not disturb her at all. When she woke, the morning fog was
beginning to lift, revealing the new homes destined for her and the
people.

Sunita had often wondered why the people fled the homes. It was
said that the dwellings built by the machines were comfortable, and
supplied with an infinite amount of nutritious "milk" flowing from
nipples in the walls. But those same fellows would tell you that the
milk was poisonous; that it would cause your babies to be born
deformed; or worse yet that you would be unable to have children at
all if you drank from it. It hardly seemed like a curse to her.

A skinny man wearing a lungi had climbed up on a plastic crate under
the measley shade of a dying tree. He was going on about the
government, and how it was destroying their lives.

"Why don't we just move into the new homes they built for us?" a
young boy yelped. He was frail and naked, and Sunita could see the
desperation in his eyes. An orphan, like herself.

"Shut up! Are you stupid?" A man standing next to the boy hit
him hard in the head with his elbow. The boy cried out, and fell down.
Sunita ran over to the boy, and helped him up. She tried to look
disdainfully at the man who hit him, but he ignored her.

"What is your name?" she asked the boy.

"Raju" he whimpered.

"This is my brother," Sunita said proudly, holding out the baby.
"He doesn't have a name yet."

"Why not?" Raju asked, whiping the tears from his dusty, and bruised
cheek.

Sunita was taken a back. She hadn't really considered the why and
how of it.

"Because he doesn't" she said simply.

Raju shrugged his shoulders and looked at the child with mild
interest. The baby was sleeping on Sunita's arm, despite the
commotion going on around him. He was used to it.

The crowd, meanwhile, was coming alive. Swept up by the fiery
speech by the man on the plastic crate, they had begun shouting
sloguns, and threats at the government.

"We'll show those bastards!" yelled the new leader. "Tear down
their junk!"

The crowd began to move towards the new houses. Sunita followed
them out of curiousity, and a lack of better things to do. Her
stomach was growling, and her brother was beginning to wake up, but
prospects for finding food were slim. Whatever vegetables they had
managed to grow in the slums had been destroyed by the machines. And
the few goats and cows they had managed to safe were so frail and
under-fed that only the strongest hands could squeeze any milk from
their udders. And those hands were too busy raising fists into the
air, preparing for destruction.
The peasant's fists were no match for the plastic walls that rose
before them. Hard as concrete, white as hardened milk, they stood
impervious to the beating and stabbing to which they were subjected.
Even the ground had been covered with plastic, so that Sunita's feet
got a pleasant massage from the bubbled texture that prevent them from
slipping. Each house raised smoothly out of the ground, 3 stories
tall, shapeless and colorless, with 2 windows on each floor, and a
door-less entry in front. Dragging Raju by the hand, with her
nameless brother on her arm, she shyly entered the dwelling. She
almost expected someone to be there, ready to chase them out of his or
her home. But the house was empty, and as shapeless and colorless on
the inside as it was on the outside.

"Look!" Raju said excitedly. "Milk!"

He was pointing at a small puddle on the floor, to their left.
Sunita's eyes followed the barely visible stream to a slight
portrusion in the wall to their left. By the time she reached the
nipple, Raju had already begun lapping up the liquid from the floor.
Sunita touched the tip of her tongue to the nipple, and tasted the
sweet nectar that was trickling out. Her lips engulfed the soft
nipple, and immediately her mouth was filled with endless bliss. She
drank until her throat was tired of swallowing, and even then she
could barely tear herself away. The faint sound of her nameless
brother crying in the distance brought her back to reality. She had
dropped him on the ground, but the wondrous plastic floor had
broken his short fall perfectly. She picked him up and held him up to
the gushing nipple, her belly still warm and tingling with a brand new
sensation. Never again will we be hungry, she thought, as she began to
doze off into a deep and wonderful sleep.






2. Lost in the Crowd




"They were fighting again," Mandra said, with a disapproving look on
her face.

Sunita listened absentmindedly to the young woman who had fed her
little brother the night before. That same little brother had soiled
the dirty rag that functioned as his diaper, and she was busy cleaning
him. Raju was still asleep, having gorged himself on the milk when he
woke up earlier that morning.

"Ambuj refuses to listen to my father. He thinks these new houses are
wonderful. He's been drinking the milk, and he wants me to drink it
too, but my father refuses."

"You didn't have the milk?" Sunita asked in surprise.

"No. Ambuj says it taste really good, and I believe him. But my
father almost punched him when he tried to convince me to try it. My
father thinks that the milk is poisoned."

Sunita picked up her clean brother, and cuddled him in her arms. She
did not want to think about the superstitious belief that the milk
was poisonous. It tastes much too good for that. And if it were
true, what would she and her brother eat instead?

They were upstairs in Sunita's new home, in the small bathroom, which
consisted of a large hole in the floor on one end, and a small tap on the
other which had running water. The hole was not very deep, and when
Sunita used it earlier that morning to do her business, she was
surprised to see her waste magically dissapear almost as soon as it
hit the bottom of the hole.

"Isn't it amazing how this bathroom works?" Sunita offered, in an
attempt to change the topic of conversation.

"Yes! And the water is nice and warm too. You don't even have to
heat it."

Sunita smiled at the prospect of taking a bath with this warm water.
But she didn't have even a small cup to use for pouring the water
over herself.

Sunita and Mandra spent the rest of the morning chatting about the old
days. It was around noon, when Mandra was about to leave to have
lunch with her family, when they suddenly heard the rising din of a
noisy crowd.

Once again, the crowd was up in arms. But this time there was only 1
machine. Grotesque and amorphous, it was ellaborately decorated with
finely woven silk and cotton tapestries. Rolling along on 4 huge black
tires, it carried on it's flat top a holographic image of Anil Chopra,
parliamentary representative for the Haryana region. His kind and
sympathetic face flickered slightly as his holographic mouth spoke to
the crowd.

"Vote for me, and I will build you even more houses!"

The holographic image paused, allowing for applause and cheering from
the crowd. But the few who cheered were quickly drowned out by the
loud booing of the detractors. One of them ran up to the machine,
brandishing a machette in his right hand. The crowd gasped as a
bright blue laser beam pierced his chest. His body was crushed
instantly under the machine's large black tires.

Sunita followed Mandra outside to see what was happening. She was
instantly mesmerized by the spectacle of the gargantuan machine,
carrying the image of the handsome politician. His clean white suite
and shining silver shawl flowed to the tune of a non-existent breeze.
The machine, and the large crowd surrounding it, were quickly
approaching her dwelling. The brown kites and white-winged vultures
circling overhead reminded her that some things had not changed from
the time before the new houses were built.

"This is the beginning of a new era of prosperity," the politician's
voice boomed.

Sunita and Mandra were swept along and seperated by the crowd as they
moved closer to get a better look at the elaborately decorated
machine. Sunita looked up at the politician's image towering above
her, and imagined that he was smiling at her.

Sunita was pulled along by the flow of the crowd for several hours.
From time to time, she tried to retreat back in the direction of her
house, but she quickly had to give up as she had to struggle just to
remain standing, and avoid getting trampled. Finally, when she was
just about to get crushed against the yielding wall of another plastic
dwelling, she managed to find the doorway, and stumble into the main
room. Like her own house, this one was completely empty, and in fact,
it looked like it was not actively occupied at all. Tired and hungry,
Sunita fell against the nearest wall, and managed to find a nipple to
gorge herself on. Soon after, she was sound asleep.

With only the stars to light her path, Sunita tried to make her way
home. The darkness did not frighten her, but the fact that she was
lost, did. Although she had very little schooling, she had learned
enough to be able to read the large number painted above the doorway
of each dwelling. She remembered the number of one of the houses near
hers that she passed as she got sucked up by the crowd. The numbers
seemed to follow a regular pattern, but it was far too complicated for
her to figure out. Instead, she asked random passers by in the street
if they knew how to get to the house with the number she remembered.
Very few did, but a few of the more clever ones had figured out how to
navigate this endless maze of white, domed houses. One young man
eagerly offered to accompany her, and while she was alarmed by his
eagerness, she felt that he was harmless, and it would be safer to
have a male companion along.

"How did you get all the way over here?" he asked her politely as they
walked side by side.

"I got swept away by the crowd."

"Oh, yes, I saw them. We stayed inside, and blocked the door with a
table," he said, laughing. "My mother is so paranoid, she thought
someone would come inside and harm us. But they were too busy
watching the big show on the cart to bother with that!"

Sunita didn't answer. She was getting increasingly worried about Raju
and her brother, who had been left sleeping in the house. Undoubtedly
they must have woken up, to discover her gone. She quickened her
pace.

"Why are you walking so fast?" the boy asked. "Why are you in such a
hurry?"

"I have to take care of my brother. I left him behind in the house,"
Sunita answered impatiently.

"How old is your brother?" he asked inquisitively.

"He was born just a few days ago."

"Oh. I will get you home as fast as I can," he resolved. "Let's
run."

Sunita followed his example, and began running at a steady pace. It
actually felt good to run, and she smiled back at her companion when
he looked back at her.

They finally reached the house whose number she remembered, and she
resolved to get rid of him now, before he could find out where she
really lived.

"Thank you, bhaiya!" she said, as she suddenly turned the corner and
continued running full speed. He had already stopped in front of the
house, and by the time he realized what was going on, Sunita had
already dissappeared behind the next house. He thought about trying
to find her, but he decided against it. It was late already, and his
mother would be on his case if he didn't return home soon.

Sunita had no idea how far, or in which direction her house was from the
one who's number she had remembered. She began by systematically trying
each of the houses around there, while carefully avoiding being
spotted by her erstwhile guide. Her only hope was to find her brother
and or Raju, or perhaps another familiar face to tell her that she was
home. She had no other way of recognizing her house. At this point,
she didn't care which house she found, so long as her brother was in
it!

After searching for several minutes, Sunita was on the verge of
panic. Just then, she heard a faint noise of footsteps behind her.

She turned around, to look over her shoulders, and was startled by a
large turbanned man with deep, yet sympathetic lines in his face, who
was walking very close behind her. She realized that he had wrapped
her in his arms as she turned.

"Let me go!" she screamed as he pressed her to his powerful chest.

Someone else pressed a strong smelling cloth to her nose, and her
muscles suddenly fell limp. She tried to move her arms and legs, but
was unable to do so. The effect lasted for only a few minutes, but
that was long enough for the men to drag her into a nearby dwelling,
and lay her down supinly on the floor. Sunita cringed as her pursuer
bend down close to her face.

"We have taken your brother and the other boy. If you cooperate with
us, we will not harm them," he whispered to her in a menacing tone.

Sunita's eyes grew large with anguish. She wanted to scream, but she
could hardly feel her tongue.

"We will not hurt you either, unless you give us trouble!" he continued.

Sunita felt little comfort from his promises. His face was almost
completely obscured by the darkness, and she could not tell whether he
was sincere or not.

"We don't want to hurt you. We have to stay the night here, because
it is too hazardous to travel now. But tomorrow morning we will take
you to see your brother."

Silent tears were welling up in her eyes, as her arms and legs began
to tingle. Control of her muscles was returning slowly.

"Go upstairs, and sleep. We will stay downstairs and guard the house.
Tomorrow will be an important day for you," he said enthusiastically.

Sunita carefully sat up, and tried in vain to wipe the tears from her
face. Her tormentor snickered in amusement at her clumsiness.

"You want me to carry you upstairs?" he offered mockingly.

"No!" Sunita managed. She scrambled onto her hands and feet, and
began crawling to the stairs. By the time she reached them, she was
able to pull her self up using the hand rail, and began climbing them
slowly. The man who had spoken to her watched in silence as she
climbed the stairs. She could hear the voices of his companions
outside, and noticed for the first time the pungent odor of their
cigarette smoke.
3. Planned Parenthood




"Can you do it?" Anil asked, concerned.

"Yes, Anil, don't worry!"

They were seated in Anil's sitting room, on the second story of his
sprawling house on the outskirts of the city. Anil took a sip from
his whiskey.

"No one must ever know," Anil continued, unperturbed.

"Yes, of course. I know that," his companion said indignantly.

Anil's face was tied up in a deep frown.

"She especially should not know. What if she finds out?"

"We could make sure she doesn't survive the procedure, you know"

Anil considered that for a moment, as he sunk deeper into his wide
leather couch. The thought certainly had occurred to him.

"No, I'd rather not kill her," he resolved.

"Why not, it's never bothered you before," the other man said with a
devious smile.

Anil looked up in irritation.

"Thanks for reminding me. I'd like to think I'm doing them a favor by
keeping their numbers down. Besides, most of them don't drink the
stuff anyway. They don't trust it for one minute."

"I wouldn't trust it either, if I were them. It's a miracle any of
them even vote for you Anil," the other man said with a devious smile.

"Have you come to torture me?" Anil asked. He leaned forward to take
another sip of his drink, trying to calm himself.

"Of course, brother. Isn't that what I always do?"

Anil smiled as he fell back against the leather comfort of his couch.
He placed his bare feet on the mahogany coffee table in front of him. It
was a solid slice through the entire base of the tree, complete with
the bark still attached. The shining natural finish looked almost
like a mirror in the bright light of the overhead lamps.

"Yes, that is what you always do. But this time, you get to do the
dirty work."

"As if this is the first time?!" his brother said with mock
indignation. "Don't think I'm doing this for you Anil. You're not
the only one who wants to procreate."

Anil raised his eyebrows. This was the first time Anurag had mentioned
his own reproductive motives.

"That was not part of the deal," Anil protested. His mind was
churning fast. He didn't fully trust his brother at all.

"So? It is now. If you don't like it, go find yourself another
genetic engineer."

Anil could feel his temper rising again. Anurag always did know how to
piss him off.

"Do you know how much trouble I'm going through for this? You think
it's all so easy, huh? Look at you, sitting there so smugly. But if
this gets out, I'm the one who takes the fall. You'll find a way to
wiggle yourself out of it, I'm sure."

"Oh shut up, Anil! This is a partnership, remember? If she's a good
match for you, I'm sure she's as good a match for me. After all, we
are twins," Anurag said gleefully.

Anil scoffed. He hardly ever thought of Anurag as his twin, though
technically he was. But when Anil had been learning how to walk,
Anurag had been nothing more than a frozen clump of cells in a freezer
somewhere. It wasn't until Anil's fifth year that Anurag had been
been implanted into their mother's womb. So it was hard for him to think
of Anurag as his twin, despite the fact that they did look a lot alike.
Temperamentally, of course, they were very different.

"Fine, we'll share. But don't count your chickens before they hatch.
Ram tells me she's not ready yet. We'll have to keep her locked up
somewhere, and wait." Anil offered.

"We won't have to wait very long. She must be close to puberty by
now. A little hormone therapy for a few weeks, and she'll be ready."

"You and your damn cocktails!" Anil laughed boisterously before
gulping down the last of his drink. "What will your wife say when you
ask her to carry the child you fathered with a tramp?"

Anurag's face darkened for a fleeting moment, but unlike his brother,
he wasn't one to stay gloomy for more than a second at a time.
Still, there was a touch of seriousness in his voice as he replied.

"Don't tell me you were planning to tell Pria about this! You must be
mad. She would never forgive you. Surely you don't expect me to be
so stupid as to tell Renu!?"

"I've already told her, Anu. Not the whole story of course, just that
we'd be using an anonymous donor. Surely you don't intend to deceive
your own wife?"

"Anil, you are a fool!" Anu hissed. His face was flushed with anger.
"I can make the child look sufficiently like her that no one will ever
know the difference. I could have done the same for you, getting a
sample of her genes would have been trivial. But instead, because of
your stupidity, you will ruin it for both of us!"

"Ruin it how?" Anil asked, flustered by Anu's sudden anger. "Renu
need never know. And Pria accepted long ago that we could not have
children the natural way. It doesn't bother her at all. She's more
than willing to pay that price in order to be the wife of a rich
politician," he said sarcastically.

Anurag sat back, his anger dissipating.

"I hope you're right Anil. Just let me know as soon as they capture
the girl. I want to get started on her therapy right away. The
sooner we can get this over with, the better."

"Of course, Anu. Are you ready to go, or shall I open another bottle
of whiskey?"

Hung over and bored, Anil could barely stay awake. He was attending
the scheduled tour of the new power plant, which only recently came
into operation.

He had lobbied hard to get it built. Several villages along the river
had had to make way for this beacon of progress. Anil dismissed any
nagging feelings of guilt. He would use some of the additional
capacity to build more plastic houses for the displaced. He reveled
in the irony.

"Those large mirrors over there focus the light from the sun..."

Anil was trying desperately to tune out the droning voice of his tour
guide. He was seated comfortably in the cart that was driving them
around the power plant. The warm morning sun was doing its best to
put him to sleep, and succeeding.

"And this is where the oil tankers dock to refuel the holding tanks."

"Why do you need oil if this is a solar power plant?" Anil asked, glad
to find something he could argue about.

"This is a hybrid power plant, sahib," the guide explained carefully.
"We rely on many different fuel sources to heat the steam, so we do
not depend on any one of them. If the oil price goes up, we buy less
oil. If the sky turns cloudy, we burn more oil," he said cheerfully.

Anil nodded sleepily. He owned a large stake in the company that had
built the parabolic mirrors. The fact that the power plant did not
fully rely on the mirrors chagrined him, but he realized that he was
too tired to argue about it with his enthusiastic hosts.

The general manager, a rather corpulent man, piped in:

"We can burn anything in this plant, sahib. Anything from coal to
people."

Anil laughed along with the others at the general manager's crude
joke. While he was somewhat disturbed by the thought of the hapless
masses filing into the furnace to be converted into electricity, it
struck him that it might not be a bad idea to take advantage of the
widespread popularity of cremation.

"Sahib! Telephone," his assistant whispered in his left ear.

Anil was annoyed by the sudden interruption. He had just begun dreaming
about his speech in front of the congress, outlining his new plan for
cheap electricity. The cart drove through the large sliding doors,
into the large hall housing the huge generators, lined up like a pack
of monstrous alligators on a river bank.

"Yes?"

"Sahib. We have the girl."

"Good!" Anil said, perking up. "Make sure she is not harmed in anyway, Ram."

"Yes, sahib, of course."

"Has she been sedated?"

"Yes, sahib, she is sound asleep."

"Good! Take her to the hiding place, and contact Anurag. I will meet
you there this afternoon."

Anil handed the phone back to his assistant. Maybe this wasn't going
to be such a lousy day after all, he thought.
4. Trapped




Sunita woke up with a hungry belly and an aching head. She had not
slept much, and had spent most of the night crying, and bemoaning her
fate. Almost instinctively, she reached up to nearest nipple with
her lips puckered to receive the nourishing milk. She was
unpleasantly surprised when her mouth remained dry. She pulled away,
and slid herself over to the next nipple. The result was no
different. Disoriented, Sunita sat down on her heels, her legs folded
underneath her. Aside from the unobtrusive nipples equally spaced
around the walls at what would be the waist height of an average
adult, the cylindrically shaped room was completely bare. The only
breaks in the monotony were the stairs which led down to the main
chamber, and the bathroom, which was just a nook in one part of the
wall. Sunita felt a strong urge to collapse to the floor and cry some
more, but she decided at the last moment to be strong. After all, she
did not want her poor brother to suffer too long in her absence.
After rubbing her eyes with the back of her dirty hands, Sunita picked
herself up from the bleak white floor, and headed for the stairs.
It would be another hot day, she thought, judging from the brightness
of the early morning sun coming through the skylight in the top of the
dome-shaped roof.

"Where are you off to, didi?" asked a familiar voice, in a mocking
tone.

No sooner had Sunita stepped outside her dwelling, that she found
herself wrapped up in his powerful arms yet again. The pent up anger
and frustration that had kept her awake through the night exploded
inside her like a fire bomb. Without thinking, she stomped her bare
right heel down hard onto his right toes. The split-second during
which he slightly loosened his grip in reaction to the sudden pain in
his foot was all she needed to worm herself free from his grasp. She
broke out in a full speed run.

"Get back here, you bitch!" Ram yelled, trying desperately to ignore
his injured toes.

Two of his henchmen were already giving chase, but Sunita was quick on
her feet, despite her nagging empty stomach.

In the short time since the sudden appearance of the new houses, the
people had already begun turning them into a lively neighborhood. The
houses were evenly distributed on the points of what seemed to be an
endless grid, creating a regular pattern of pathways that could be
interpreted to be streets. Some large families had appropriated
several houses, and had marked off their new territory with tall
bamboo and linen fences, interrupting the regularity of the streets.
Sunita was heading for such a demarcation, and couldn't afford to go
around the obstacle. Her pursuers were too close on her heels.
Instead, she decided to crawl underneath the tightly fastened sheet
that bridged the gap between two bamboo poles.

Inside the small courtyard that had been created, it was a pleasant
mess. Several goats were tied to a large ox card in the center,
surrounded by their own trampled feces. A large bull was sleeping in
a corner formed by the makeshift fence and the house to the near
right. He was apparently unperturbed by Sunita's sudden appearance.
To her left was a make shift vegetable garden in a large, shallow
container constructed from wood and bamboo that somehow managed to
hold the soil that had been deposited into it. The scraggly plants
growing in the soil were not doing very well. They were still
stressed from having been moved to their new home. Under an
awning made from 2 sticks and a large, thin red and yellow cloth
in front of the entrance to the house further away, and to the left of
Sunita, an old woman was sitting on a crate, braiding the hair of a
girl about the same age as Sunita. They were both startled by her
sudden appearance, and were even more alarmed by the subsequent
entrance of two large, hostile looking men, who, unlike Sunita,
managed to tear down most of the fence in an apparent attempt to run
straight through, instead of underneath it.

"Leave me alone!" Sunita yelled in terror, as she skillfully climbed
up the ox cart in the center of the no longer so clearly demarcated
courtyard. To her delight, she found an old talwar (sword) in the ox
cart, which she brandished at the two startled men.

The old lady and her younger companion, in the meantime, had begun a
screaming campaign of their own, and several sleepy men appeared from
the houses surrounding the courtyard.

"What's going on here?" one of them yelled, looking from Sunita to her
pursuers and back.

"They're trying to kill me!" Sunita screamed hysterically, jabbing the
sword in the direction of the two men. The men, still entangled
in the bamboo and linen that formerly constituted a fence, quickly
realized that they were at a disadvantage.

"What the hell did you do to my fence?" the man yelled again,
confusion turning into anger against the two obvious culprits.

Rather than risking a potentially dangerous altercation, the two men
in turn ran back in the direction from which they had come.

"Get down from there before you get hurt!" the man yelled at Sunita
over the din off the goats, who were becoming loudly agitated over the
sudden disturbance of their early morning ritual.

"Go easy on her! Can't you see that she is frightened?" the old lady
admonished what appeared to be her son. She walked up to the ox cart
and reached up her hand to Sunita.

"Why don't you come down from there, and tell me what happened?" she
said in a calming voice.

Sunita dropped the sword, and clamored down from the ox card.
Angry tears were still flowing down her cheek as she took the old
ladies hand, and followed her into the shelter of the dwelling with
the awning in front of it.

Sunita was surprised by the warm cup of chai the old lady slipped into
her hands.

"Thank you, biji" she said respectfully.

"Why were those men chasing you?" the old lady asked.

Sunita looked up at her with a quizzical look. The room they were
sitting in was lined with old crates, small tables, and other random
junk, that gave it a more homey appearance than Sunita's own stark
dwelling. The door had been covered with a hanging cloth, but the
bright sunlight still fell in around it. For the first time, Sunita
noticed that the walls were letting some of the sunlight through as well,
creating a very defuse and pleasant light inside. The stairs had been
covered with a strip of old carpet, and Sunita and the old lady were
sitting on a small carpet near the center of the room. Everyone else
had apparently gone outside to mend the fence, and talk about what had
just happened.

"I don't know," Sunita said, breaking the silence. "They kidnapped my
brother, and now they have turned off the milk to my house, and they
wouldn't let me leave, and I ..." she did not finish her sentence, and
broke into sobs again.

The old lady wiped Sunita's cheeks with her dry skinned hands.

"You have no milk in your house?" she asked, trying to distract Sunita
from whatever else was upsetting her.

"No! Now I'm hungry," she muttered.

"Good!" exclaimed the old lady. "We don't drink their poison anyway.
I will feed you some freshly made chipatees (flat bread)."

"Why don't you drink the milk?" Sunita asked, temporarily distracted
from thinking about her kidnapped brother.

"I do not want my grand-daughters to have dead babies. Didn't anyone
tell you that they poison the milk to kill the babies before they are
even born?" the old lady said as she got up to fetch some chipatees
from an earthen ware pot sitting on one of the small tables against
the wall.

"But how do you know that? I gave it to my little brother, and he did
not die." The thought of her helpless infant brother in the clutches
of those heartless bastards threatened to drag her back into despair,
but she resisted.

"The girl 2 houses from here had a baby yesterday that was born dead.
After only 1 day of drinking the milk! I do not trust these houses,
with sweet milk flowing from the walls. We have lived for generations
on bread, vegetables & cow's milk. Why is it suddenly not good enough
anymore? Why do we suddenly get served sweet milk whenever we want
it, in plastic houses we didn't ask for?"

She served Sunita 2 chipatees. Sunita thanked her, and tried to eat
them slowly, despite the burning hunger inside her stomach.

"But these houses are much better than the ones we used to live in?"
Sunita offered.

"Yes, of course, it's always better than before. The water they gave
us from the pipes, it was better than well water they said. We would
no longer get sick, and our teeth would stop rotting. Then, suddenly,
none of the young women get pregnant anymore. And we start feeling
weak, and tired all the time. And we hear stories that they poisoned
the water. So we stopped drinking it. We went back to the well, and
the filthy river. And we yelled at the politicians that they were
poisoning us, but they assured us they weren't. There was nothing
wrong with the water they said. 'See, I drink it myself, and my wife
too' Anil Jagdev said on the big screen cart. But we didn't believe
him then, and we don't trust them anymore. I would rather die of
starvation then let those bastards poison me!"

Sunita started on the second chipatee, painfully aware that it would
not go far towards stilling her hunger. She glanced hungrily at the
nearest nipple on the wall opposite her. She was quickly loosing
interest in the conversation, and the delicious chipatees served only
to stimulate her appetite. After she finished the second one, Sunita
could no longer resist the temptation. She turned around to crawl up
to the nipple she knew would be somewhere on the wall behind her. But
before she could put her lips to it, the old lady pulled her back,
while screaming:

"No, don't drink from it!"

Just then, her oldest son and his younger brother walked in through
the entrance, after pushing the curtains aside.

"Mama, are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine. She tried to drink the milk, and I stopped her," she
said with pride in her voice.

Sunita could not bring herself to fight back against the old lady who
had been so kind to her otherwise. Instead, she withdrew into the
despair that had been patiently awaiting her. Curled up in the old
lady's comforting lap, Sunita fell into a deep unconsciousness brought
on by hunger, stress, and sleep deprivation.

Sunita's would be captor and his lieutenants returned to Sunita's
hiding place shortly after, this time with fierce and deadly looking
weapons, and a searching dog in case she had decided to move on.
Despite his misgivings, the old lady's son, as head of the household,
willingly surrendered the unconscious Sunita to them, rather than
jeopardizing his family and his meager possessions.