As she approaches the village, Sathi rings her bicycle bell and the children come running to meet her, shouting "Hello, hello". Women emerge from their homes one by one. Sitting in the middle of a beaten-earth yard, Sathi carefully places her laptop on a plastic chair, plugs in headphones and launches a session on Skype. The faces of village men working thousands of kilometres from here appear on the screen.
"It's like my brother was standing right there, except I can't touch him. What's more he's put on weight and lost colour since he started work in Iraq," says a worried Sumita. She keeps saying "As-salamu alaykum" and "Hello", for fear he might vanish. "It's a bad connection," Sathi explains. "It's a public holiday and everyone wants to call the Gulf states, so it's busy."