IT is a cluster of dwellings in the middle of thriving forests in Kerala’s Wayanad district. A sprinkling of families of the Oorali tribe live here in single-room structures built by the government. Painted yellow and numbered, the dwellings are set apart from each other.
From one of the dwellings emerges a wasted young Oorali man, Ramesh, wearing a sparkling white surgical mask across his nose and mouth. He has a runaway tuberculosis infection. It began in the abdomen and spread to his lungs and brain.