[…] gleeful grins on their faces and arms wrapped around girls of known questionable reputation who no self-respecting Maxonian lad would have touched with a barge pole.

According to data published in WHO’s Weekly Epidemiological Record, India’s annualised non-polio AFP rate for 2011 stood at 15.06 per one lakh children below 15 years of age, compared to a global rate that year of 5.48.

In fact, the political preoccupation with welfare reform, as it encompassed drastic changes to multiple forms of public assistance, became synonymous in the arguments of avid reformers with assumptions about undeserving welfare mothers, deviant women's responsibility, and dependency.

I have vague memories of her writing on blue airmail stationery—del icate sheets that tuck into themselves—ready to be sealed, stamped, and sent par avion.