A few years ago, I had a chance to spend time with a small family from the Agariya community. The Agariyas are a nomadic people that move about the Rann of Kutch and farm salt. Theirs is a very harsh life in very difficult conditions.
I arrived at the two-hut encampment in the blazing mid-day heat. A day earlier, I had met Raju bhai, who along with his wife, young daughter and a sister, lived in the encampment and farmed the nearby flats. The only conditions he had for me visiting was that I bring packs of Marie biscuits and a couple of sheets to lie on because he had none spare.
I walked around talking photographs and showing him how a digital camera works. We talked late into the evening in broken Hindi, eating those biscuits first and then a very simple meal cooked under the darkening sky. I slept fitfully that night, cold, shivering and raging at the world and its inequities.
