Kharinja. If I’ve to sum up my reporting experience this election—something I’ve not done before—then it’d be that word. A word whose meaning I didn’t know, a word that deflated and angered the villagers of Raebareli and Amethi. When Rajmati, a farmer, told me that she doesn’t even have a kharinja, I first thought she referred to a farming tool. A grave tone, I thought, must correspond to a huge demand—it wasn’t. Kharinja, in fact, is a need so basic that many city slickers don’t even pause to ponder it: a side road.