Mr. Singh, who was born in what is now Pakistani Punjab, moved to India in 1947 at the time of the subcontinent's partition. He left Punjab when sectarian violence began to rack the state, and eventually settled in a Sikh community in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state. His life there was stable until the soil began to show signs of exhaustion. Not one to wait for disaster to strike, Mr. Singh took his children, grandchildren and tractor and moved down to the plains to Biharipur in 1991. It was the first time the Singhs had lived in a caste-based Hindu community, and Biharipur's stratified society still baffles them.
Some people are lower on the ladder than others.
We try to avoid all that. While the rest of Biharipur, like most of rural northern India, crowds together in an unhygienic village core, the Singhs chose to build a farmhouse in the open field. Walking across the rice paddies to the adobe farmhouse is a journey to another way of life. The house and yard are immaculately clean, free of the animal and human feces that clutter the village lanes. And there is a spacious outdoor cooking area to avoid the smoke that fills most village houses at dinner time.