Nepal, Aug. 10 -- Polarisation does not arrive suddenly. It does not even appear from afar like a procession. It comes quietly, like dampness seeping into the walls of an old house and going unnoticed for a long time. Gradually, it erodes the foundations of structures-yours and your neighbours' too.

One day, that same neighbour at whose house you would walk in without knocking to drink tea pauses before opening the door. This pause is brief, but it is from here that society begins to change. Earlier, people knew one another's names. They even addressed each other using terms like chacha, bhaiya, chachi, daadi. Earlier, children did not know which religion their friends belonged to. They only knew whose house had the sweetest guavas, whos...