In Agra, Dalits yearn for Maya of yore, search for new icon

Lal mirch, haldi, dhaniya. These are the three ingredients Kusum Nigam mostly uses in her sparse kitchen that's carved out of the one-room house in which she lives with her husband and three daughters. At the end of a gruelling week working leather into pretty shapes that will eventually cover someone's feet, when her husband brings home his wages, they sometimes decide to get a little meat.