Twelve Reasons To Celebrate

Our birthday gift to ourselves this year was to find reasons for hope and celebration in the unlikeliest places. And we did. In an extraordinary house of healing within the squalid, paan-stained walls of a sarkari hospital. In the beguiling charm of matchbox art. In a hot plate of tamarind rice at a government school. In a village on the edge of the Thar where the roads are as smooth as Hema Malini's cheeks. In a city NGO that went international to save a forgotten heritage site. In a municipality with a heart, and a haat that's become an urban retail model. In "convent-educated" girls of a kind you've never met before.... Read on.