Sarita is around three, sweet-looking and healthy. But she was not so when she and her mother, Guria, first came in. She was so emaciated she could hardly walk, her legs bent as if she had polio. Guria is a Muslim from Pilkhana, a large slum in Howrah across the Ganga from Kolkata. A Hindu man from Moradabad in UP had taken her along and there they lived as man and wife.
Then one day the man told her, let’s go live where I work and there you can cook. He put mother and child in the. . .