Letter from India: No Place Like Home

However bad it gets, there are some traditions from the old days that Kitty Teixeire refuses to let die. She greets visitors barefoot in a bedraggled sari at the doorless entrance to her collapsing bungalow. But when she serves coffee, she covers her splintered table with a white cloth and pours into what may be the only set of matching cups and saucers for hundreds of kilometers. "It was such a beautiful place," she sighs in her clipped vowels, a gift of her mixed Welsh, Portuguese and Indian blood. "But McCluskieganj just went down and down. Down the drain, you can...