A little way down the road, I saw a pond where egrets, their every move elegant, were washing their wings. Nearby, in a puddle or a ditch, a dun sow wallowed with her piglets around her. I'd never thought much about pigs before: when I was a girl, we weren't even allowed to mention them, they belonged with the other unmentionables like snakes and lizards and dogs.

But I reached Dholpur that night and wrote. About a sow and her brood, the kidnapping of one of her piglets for food, the dispersal of the rest, the sow's lonely struggle to survive. I showed it to Siddiq Saheb, as I always did in those days. He didn't say much, just:

'Can't you make the sow into a bitch? Or a donkey? You know how we feel about pigs.'

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Last modified on September 5, 2011  | © Telegram 2005