Think Different

When we reach his home in Kandukur village in Andhra Pradesh, 21-year-old Nukathoti Kondaiah serves us bottled mineral water, freshly cut fruit and cold drinks in plastic cups. That may not seem such a big deal but earlier in the day Kondaiah had trudged a couple of hours in the sweltering heat to the nearest grocery store to buy these luxuries. Next month he will begin work with Wipro as a trainee in its software department, taking his mentally-challenged mother with him for treatment. We talk under the shade of a banyan tree surrounded by a crowd of villagers who treat Kondaiah like a celebrity. An eight-year-old fidgeting with the photographer's camera says he'd like to be Kondaiah when he grows up. The odds couldn't have been less in his favour when the teenager's father died young, followed as suddenly by the deaths of his siblings. "She went mad," he says of his mother's ill-health, "I'm her only hope." Life wasn't ki...