Life at the bottom of the pile

There is almost nothing special about this story of the life of a poor woman

The maid who cooks for us has lately become a bit irregular. Considering that she has been with my in-laws and us for years, we initially gave her a bit of leeway. But when we found that she had also become a bit more cheerful than usual, we could not help but ask.

Then what she revealed made us cheerful too. She has somehow become a beneficiary of a state welfare programme that gave people below a certain level of income a modest sum to build a pucca house of their own. To be eligible she had to own a little