Like so many other families in rural Uttar Pradesh where, according to census 2011, 92% of rural households cook on chulhas, Manju and Sateesh also bake rotis, cook rice, and make dal by burning cow-dung cakes and wood. Their house has one room, and when I first visited them there, the chulha was kept inside the room in a corner. Once they learned about the relationship between smoke and respiratory infections, they happily shifted the chulha outside. They were also enthusiastic about preventing disease by washing their hands and keeping dirty diapers in a covered bucket so that flies could not bring the germs on them to their babies’ mouths. When I asked Sateesh why people in villages do not normally do these small things to improve health, he said, “We are village people, we are not aware; all that we know was passed down from our ancestors. These are simple things but one cannot expect us to know them without being told.”