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Home 38
Nalanda, Bihar
Nalanda location map

Both K and his wife received disability cheques from the government; he appeared to have a club foot, although with enough mobility to allow him to go about his work as a milkman. His wife, on the other hand, had to use both her hands to help propel herself forward. K’s wife was married when she was only eleven, and these days she rarely left her house, preferring instead to sit by her front door and talk to her neighbours and friends. “Bhagwaan ke ghar se” (from the house of god) she said to explain the cause of the disability. Their eight-year-old daughter, R, completed the family. When remembering her own wedding, K’s wife expressed her hope that her daughter would get married at 15 or 16.

K’s mother lived in the house opposite theirs with other family-members, and only a narrow strip of land provided a cursory boundary between their two homes. Like the other houses in the village, K’s family had installed a shrine to a deity in their courtyard, and they also kept a plump-looking cactus plant.