Flex Mentallo

All of the women decided wanted photographs of themselves wearing their best saris and insisted I joined them. Poor me.

This is Sahara Beghum. When young she was the village beauty and that has scarcely diminished. You can clearly see the Arabic ancestry. Nirmal was very much in love with her. At one point he had to rescue her from her husband's family. They lived a hundred miles away, and had her confined in a mosquito infested para (sort of a village compound), where she fell seriously ill with malaria... Nirmal bravely went to her rescue (they could easily have killed him) and returned with her to the village. She was heavily pregnant at the time. Later, her husband rather sheepishly turned up and settled down with her. They were so poor that they slept on the ground on thin mats. I eventually had to buy them a bed, though it scarcely fitted in their tiny mud hut. .She is an expert seamstress.

The girls in particular are very proud of their uniforms. In some cases they will be the best clothes they own.

Eventually the teachers gave up trying to maintain order and got in on the act.but as you can see they were not best pleased. State education in India is very regimented.

Caused a near riot when I visited the local state school (which Paddyfield's children were too poor to attend).

Regrettably, despite everyone's best efforts, she died a few years later. But I will always remember her bravery, and bright personality.

We took her for x-rays, paid for a specialist to see her as well but found that unfortunately the tumor had become inoperable. The tumor had stunted her growth, and she had become blind. She is 15 in this photo.

Subha was wonderful with her.

I arranged for a friend of mine from Calcutta, Dr. Subhasis Chakrabarti to come see her.

Her father, Manan, once a relatively well off farmer, bankrupted himself long before I ever met him, buying ineffectual homeopathic medicines for her. Manan had massive, mallet-like hands, which he constantly flexed. His anger and frustration were so close to the surface, that I felt he wanted to lash out at everything and everyone around him. I'm sure I would have done. But he never did.