I now live on a campus. in a village My quarters are right next to the gate. 

But in between my digs and the gate there is a single room allotted for the watchman and his family. Not only do his four kids and wife live with him, but so do two cousins, an uncle, the wife's sister and an assortment of relatives who come and go. 

Nowhere is the acceptance of logic-less, magic-less reality more apparent than it is here. My quarters are simple, according to living standards of today. One living area, a tiny pathway dubbed as the kitchen, a decent bathroom and a small bedroom. 1BHK, as they say here, in Bangalore. But I cannot imagine how all of the watchman's family fit in that single room.

I live here with my two puppies, who snooze on the bed or the foot mat. The watchman's wife is woman in her early 20s or late teens called Sabu. Her sister is a seven year old called Paru. She takes care of her nephews, one a toddler of two and the other an infant of a say 6 months, when her sister Sabu goes out to work as a maid. 

Today ,when Sabu went to work, Paru also wanted to go to the toilet. She gave the infant in the arms of her 4 year old niece, Sneha. Sneha, unable to carry him gave him to three year old Neha, her sister. Now Neha's arms ached so much that she started to bawl in pain. When I went out to find out what happened. Paru beat Sneha for giving the baby to Neha. Sneha beat Neha for bawling. Sneha also accused Paru of lying and said that she really didn't have to go to the toilet.

I had the baby with me for a few minutes as Paru went in to the shrubs to relieve herself. She returned, took the baby back and thanked me. 

Will we ever live in a society where the rights of children are not so systematically trampled upon? While this is still better than a system in which the state takes care of children without caregivers, it's so unfair on the kids and the terrible unfairness of it all keeps pricking me.