After we'd been walking for fifteen minutes or so along streets busy with traffic and people, we got to a quieter area of the city. I asked Lakshmi where her house was, and pointing to what looked like a slum only a short distance away, she said, "There, uncle."
I became apprehensive. It is common knowledge that slums are unhealthy places, that people living in slums are all small time crooks, dirty, violent, and diseased, and that it is dangerous...