As a young Ayurvedic doctor, Rajendra Singh left his home town on the plains near Delhi and set out to practise in the poor, desolate villages of Alwar district in the deserts of Rajasthan in India. But a conversation with an old man from Alwar changed the course of his life and the fate of that region.
Seven months after Singh had moved to Alwar, the old man told him: ‘We don’t want your treatment and we don’t want you to teach our children. We want water, that’s all. If we get water, our health will improve, our farm animals will be taken care of and people will return to our village.’
