‘I shall become the man my father was, and I will succeed’

IT WAS almost two years since the rains wet the lands. Most of South India sweltered under the onslaught of the oppressive heat as it bleached the parched earth. The natural vegetation and the crops planted by the villagers lay withered. Green paddy fields which once rippled in the breeze lay barren as dust storms swept the countryside.

Sweeping winds fanned wildfires, which, fed by the tinder-dry remnants of rice patches, raced through vast areas of the countryside. Many families stood by helplessly as their homes disappeared beneath raging walls of flame. Efforts of some villages to thwart the fires were feeble in the face of such ruin. It was an attempt, a futile gesture,