But If Writing About People Who Are

I Was Spending A Lot Of Time In Mumbai After I Met My Husband, Who Is Indian, And While Parts Of The City Were Prospering Like Crazy, I Couldn't Quite Make Out How The New Wealth Had Changed The Prospects Of The Majority Of City Residents Who Lived In Slums. So After A Few Years I Stopped Wondering And Started Reporting.

I'm Useless When I Meet Writers I Love - I Go Slack-jawed And Stupid With Awe.

People Naturally Long For A Bit Of The Wealth That Is Whorling All Around Them, And If The Work And Education Available To Them Won't Get Them Closer To The Comforts That They See Others Enjoying, The Temptation To Take Shortcuts Can Be Fierce.

Rich Indians Typically Tried To Work Around A Dysfunctional Government. Private Security Was Hired, City Water Was Filtered, Private School Tuitions Were Paid. Such Choices Had Evolved Over The Years Into A Principle: The Best Government Is The One That Gets Out Of The Way. The Attacks On The Taj And The Oberoi, In Which Executives And Socialites Died, Had Served As A Blunt Correction. The Wealthy Now Saw That Their Security Could Not Be Requisitioned Privately. They Were Dependent On The Same Public Safety System That Ill Served The Poor.

One Chronicler Writes Of An Area Of India During The End Of The 20th Century: Almost No-one In This Slum Was Poor By Indian Benchmarks. ... True, A Few Residents Trapped Rats And Frogs And Fried Them For Dinner. A Few Ate The Scrub Grass At The Sewage Lake Edge. And These Individuals, Miserable Souls, Thereby Made An Inestimable Contribution To Their Neighbors. They Gave Those Slum Dwellers Who Didn't Fry Rats And Eat Weeds A Sense Of Their Upward Mobility.