She was a single mother. She carried him horizontally in her arms. The pallu of her dishevelled cotton saree covered his head to avoid attention from inquisitorial onlookers prying at her plight in a crammed outpatient clinic of our public hospital. One of the men, showing some rectitude, jostled on the wooden bench to give her six inches on the edge of the plank. She sat heavily, the weight in her arms seeming infinitesimally lesser than the encumbrance on her face.

I could see her through the slit of the half double door of my cabin, which swung open and shut constantly, typifying the busy-ness of a government hospital imbued with patients wanting to be seen first. I gently gestured for the crowd to ease off a little and allow for her to come in on priority. They acquiesced gracefully. The civility that indigent people display to accommodate their own, often transcends that of the affluent.