When I visited it a few years ago, open drains were spilling water onto crowded lanes. (The next monsoon season, three young boys fell into the drains and died.) The tin roofs of the houses overlapped one another like fish scales; a roadside tap dripped a brown fluid that passed for potable water. When a toddler ran out from an open door onto the street, a neighbor caught him and lifted him up. Someone in the family I counted six people in a single room, including an elderly couple sent another child to retrieve him. In that episode alone, I later realized, I had witnessed at least nine one-on-one contacts.