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Lalitpur, Uttar pradesh
Lalitpur location map

When we met M and his family, they were busy fixing a storm drain. M has been getting a more or less steady stream of work in the village via a national employment scheme called MNREGA. M lived with a large family: his old father, brothers and their wives and children, M’s own wife and children, and a couple of healthy looking buffaloes. Some of the children even had children of their own. They all lived together in a house along the main road of the new part of the village. M’s mother carried around with her a plastic bag of tobacco. One of her great grandsons, a toddler, screamed and pounced at her because he wanted to mix the tobacco for her himself, and everyone laughed.

Her husband, M’s father, who recently had a cataract operation, sat at his usual place near the entrance to the house. He was hard of hearing and also had difficulty seeing. Despite surgery, one of his eyes still gave him trouble. “Roshni nahi hai [there is no light]”. But people keep saying “Dekho! [See]” to him, using it as a figure of speech to address a half blind man.