But between these towns lived the other India, one of villages unchanged for centuries. To a Londoner and seaman they were another world, and Hawksworth understood almost nothing of what he saw. Several times he had started to ask Vasant Rao some question about a village, but the time never seemed right. The Rajput was constantly occupied with the progress of the caravan and never spoke unless he was giving an order. The long silence of the road had gathered between them until it was almost an invisible wall. For no apparent reason this changed suddenly on the afternoon after Narayanpur, as the caravan rumbled into the small village of Nimgul and began working its way along the single road through the town. Vasant Rao drew his mount alongside Hawksworth's and pointed to a white plaster building up ahead that dominated the center of the village. "I grew to manhood in a village such as this, Captain, in a house much like that one there." Hawksworth examined the well-kept house, and then the village around it. Spreading away on all sides were tumbledown thatch-roofed homes of sticks and clay, many raised on foot-high stilts to keep them above the seasonal mud. Gaunt, naked children swarmed about the few remaining trees, their voices piping shrilly at play, while elderly men lounged on the porches smoking hookahs. Most of the able-bodied men seemed to be in the fields, leaving their women--unsmiling laborers in drab body- length wraps, a large marriage ring dangling from one nostril--to toil in the midday sun combing seeds from large stacks of cotton, shelling piles of small-eared corn, and boiling a dense brown liquid in wide iron pans. Vasant Rao drew up his horse in front of the pans and spoke rapidly with one of the sad-eyed women. There was a tinkle of her heavy silver bracelets as she bowed to him, then turned to ask a turbaned overseer to offer them two clay cups of the liquid. Vasant Rao threw the man a small coin, a copper _pice_, and passed one of the cups to Hawksworth. It was viscous and sweeter than anything he had ever tasted. Vasant Rao savored a mouthful, then discarded the cup into the road. "They're boiling cane juice to make _gur_, those brown blocks of sugar you see in the bazaars, for the Brahmin landholders to sell. She's a Camar, a low caste, and she works from sunup to dusk for a day's supply of _chapattis_, fried wheat cakes, for her household. Wages haven't risen in the villages since I was a boy." "Why did she ask the overseer to bring you the cup?" "Because I'm a Rajput." Vasant Rao seemed startled by the question. "I would pollute my caste if I took a cup from the hand of a Camar. If a Rajput or a Brahmin eats food that's been handled by a member of the low castes, he may be obligated to undergo ritual purification. If you are born to a high caste, Captain, you must honor its obligations." Hawksworth studied him, wondering why he had finally decided to talk.