Volume 5 · The Great Indian Bazaar · Essay 35

Caretaker Status

Some ideas arrive wearing uniforms. Caretaker Status arrives in a kurta — plain, comfortable, and ready for work.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

It is worth keeping in your pocket not because it is always right, but because it is always available. A tool you carry beats a perfect tool you left at home.

Stand at a tea stall during a big cricket match and you will see a hundred strangers become one family in an evening. The same crowd, given a different match, can split over a surname.

Society is a long conversation; the only question is whether you are listening or merely waiting to speak. No ceremony needed. Begin with the very next decision.