If we were in India now, there would be servants standing in the corners of this room and I wouldn't notice them. That is what my society is like, that is what the divide is like.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I don't think people give Indian society enough credit. We may not like to talk much about things but we do, basically, want to live and let live.
I think people are always going to be fascinated about the haves and have nots - about the divide between the servants and the rich families upstairs.
We can't deny the existence of caste in India. We have to live with it.
As the years passed in my village, I witnessed poorly educated young men leaving to seek the greater comforts and liberations of big cities. I would see them on my visits to Delhi.
The extraordinary thing about India is that it's such a family place. It's full of families everywhere.
Maids in India have egos. Big egos. They do not like being spoken to curtly, and they do not like to be abruptly instructed by a woman they do not know. They come with the feeling that they already know everything. So while training them to do things your way, speak gently, and when they do it right, appreciate it.
Anyone who has been to India - specifically Rajasthan, the rich and kingly region in the country's northwest - knows that when it comes to adornment, Indians do not think like other people.
It's not quite right to be sitting outside India and to be judging what is happening in India.
Visits to crowded Indian urban centers unleash sensory assaults: colorful dress and lilting chatter provide a backdrop to every manner of commerce, from small shops to peddlers to beggars.
Most modern Indians don't stick to their caste jobs any more. There is more inter-caste marriage, more fluidity, more freedom than ever before. But the outcastes are usually still outcastes, because they are still the ones who tan India's animals, burn its dead, and remove its excrement.
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