People say India is chaotic. Yet, what looks like chaos to some, is also an incredible diversity genuinely trying to accommodate different needs, journeys, approaches, contradictions. To achieve that, we cannot walk in neat lines. Instead we snake in and out through each other’s spaces, giving way — asking for it, or asserting it at times — connecting, separating, getting along as needed, not by compulsion but by pragmatic adjustment. The presence of many systems of thinking, several models of markets, many kinds of cultural habits, cheek by jowl in one place is what some call chaos. But really, there’s a simple word for this wrongly named chaos of India. That word is tolerance.

Family members of Mohammed Iqlakh mourn during his funeral at their village in Bisada on September 29