From the Internet:
The sense of rot was palpable in our everyday lives. The poverty had so permeated our lives that we took every kind of neglect, every kind of injustice, every kind of horror with a pinch of salt. So when we slept and roaches crawled on our faces, it was a part of life and we were thankful it wasn’t rats. When we developed some kind of infection that left lumps of rotting flesh on our lower parts, nobody seemed too worried.
We ran through the streets unbathed, without shoes and teeming with lice, and no one cared. No one cared that we had tapeworms and occasional bouts of amoebic dysentery. Our young neighbor Sudha who originally only had polio (but eventually went half mad with neglect) would drag herself around the neighborhood, trailing menstrual blood behind her sometimes and her family didn’t try to help her. When our friend’s drunken father threw down his drunken mother with a sickle at her throat, no one intervened. The children actually giggled.
Jai Hind! Good Lord, what a shithole.
