Tears wouldn’t stop, Sainath, tears wouldn’t stop, as I watched your film Nero’s Guests, as I saw you interview the families and children of the hundreds of farmers who had committed suicide. Their bellies weren’t distended, nor were their limbs mangled, but their eyes, Sainath, their eyes. And I saw you fill up form after form with your Reynolds as you sat across them like a census-walah. I saw you fill up their despair in empty boxes and empty spaces, after colons, before dashes, I saw you do all of that. I saw you take photos of them as they stood by their thatched shacks and stared blankly at the camera. You saw them through the viewfinder but I saw them through your eyes, Sainath!