“An individual-to-individual callousness… is still so strong in the country that it is the greatest danger for a foreigner living in India, for it is a frighteningly easy thing to find it creeping into one’s soul.”
A. M. Rosenthal, The Future in Retrospective

I stepped, not looking, and slid; swayed backwards, snapped forward, and stopped. A smear of yellow brown behind me led to a large, fresh, now trampled, cowpat. It had been spread thickly over my sandal, and, despite thinning at the heel, continued up to reach my calf. A nearby woman – wrinkled, squatting, bony arms wrapped around her bony knees – noticed me: tall, white, with a soiled foot raised gingerly for inspection; she grimaced, then spat. (Read on …)