On the street, by the bus stopping place, is a severely humpbacked woman, painfully bent. She walks slowly leaning on a cane, carrying a plastic bag. The kind hearts among the pedestrians put a small sum kyat into her bag. There is no welfare here, and she must have no family. This is Buddhist welfare.

The gesture of a younger humpbacked lady moves me deeply, as she stops to fish in her purse, and leaning on her daughter pushes some notes into the plastic bag. She walks on quickly. And I can feel her heart, that she knows that she lives in grace, with the same affliction, knowing that in some number of years more, she will be physically the same, but with the crucial difference that she has this loving daughter holding her arm.