April 20. “Button, an article in the Hindustan Times shook me up today.”

“Must be really terrible.”

“It’s not only terrible, this is news I’ll never forget.”

“Want to share it with me?”

“In a village called Ghatsila in Jharkhand, malnutritioned children with protruding bellies have red-hot iron rods plunged into their sides by superstitious, poor parents in the belief that it will cure stomach ailments. This barbaric act not only maims these kids but inadvertently even kills them. The belief is that children with protruding bellies have worms which can be killed by this act.”

“This is unthinkable!”

“Innocent children pay the price of being born to helpless illiterate parents.”

“How can literacy be of any consequence when hunger stalks them every single day of their lives?

“True. We don’t understand what hunger pangs can make people do because we happen to be the privileged lot. Do you know that people still eat flowers, ants, stones to satiate their hunger?”

“It can’t get any worse.”