Bitter Ash

t was about a year and a half ago that 30-year-old Nayimuddin Ansari last looked at his three children without any problem in his vision. On a sunny afternoon in March last year, while Ansari was going home, something got into his eyes. He stopped on the side of the highway, next to the Triveni sugar mill—the largest in Asia—in the Uttar Pradesh town of Khatauli. He rubbed his eyes to try to get rid of the irritant. A few days later, he had pain, and then an infection, in his eyes. “The local doctor advised me to go to AIIMS, Delhi for free-of-cost operation,” Ansari told me.