The number of kids standing outside the bishop’s palace with pots and containers was enough to fill two elementary schools. The bishop saw to it that the children did not leave with empty pots or empty stomachs. Five or so stone basins as large as baby elephants were set up on the palace grounds in front of the Virgin Mary. Each time the basin was filled, the milk sloshed about in waves. If Mahavishnu could see this, he would surely give up his abode in the Ocean of Milk and move here!

When the clock struck seven, a massive crowd of children gathered in front of the bishop’s palace. Children sat in the dust on either side of the road. Some of the kids peered through the gaps in the gate. One child—clad in nothing but a loincloth—was lying on his belly in front of the gate and providing a running commentary, all the while kicking himself on his bum with his heels.

“Now they are breaking open the milk-powder boxes . . . They are pouring in water . . . Hey! Don’t dilute it so much . . . What are you doing, you are just pouring it in . . . There comes the bishop . . . Sir, good morning . . . Now the bearded fellow is coming to open the door . . . Be ready, everybody . . .”

This was the usual ritual. One Thursday, however, things went slightly differently. There was a sudden downpour the evening before, and the rain kept up its whimpering all night. Then, at dawn on Thursday morning, it began to pour again. The children waited at home until the rain let up a little, then ran toward the palace. A group of kids from Mada Street reached the tamarind-tree junction; they came stomping on the puddles of rainwater that had filled up the potholes in the cement road. The rain picked up again by the time they reached the tamarind tree, so they stopped under its shelter.

Rainwater dripped from the tree continuously. Those kids who were wearing shirts pulled their collars over their heads and stood, hugging their arms to their chests. Other kids wore pots and containers as helmets over their heads. Rainwater from the leaves splashed against these pots.

The rain began to subside. Just as the children were about to head out, groups of manual scavengers began to arrive under the tree—people decreed by their low caste status to be sanitation workers who did the work others didn’t want to do. There were at least forty or fifty of them. Behind these groups came a man on a bicycle. He leaned his bicycle against the locked doorway of a store, opened a notebook, and started calling out names. And when they heard their name, the manual scavengers responded: “Present, present.”