Anna Hazare had to put himself through no such contortions: he was a real villager, born and raised in the poor village of Ralegan Siddhi in western Maharashtra, 60 miles from the city of Pune, a huddle of peasant huts dependent like thousands of other villages across the country on subsistence agriculture.
A local villager knows his way by wont and without reflection to the village church, to the town hall, to the shops and back home again from the personal point of view of one who lives there.
The chaotic contest ended when some particularly robust or skillful villager managed to send the ball through the portal of the opposing village's parish church.
A villager on the boat was also killed, another official said.
A villager told me he saw corpses lying in the street; he could not count them because he was running".
Several times we saw couples acting indecently which irked us," villager Savio Rebeiro told AFP.
The royal family was marvellous but these festivities had better not cost too much, said one villager, recorded as "Nurse, female, 50", explaining: "People are not in the mood".West Hoathly was reliably monarchist, the file records, with anti-republican sentiment boosted by recent American elections ("Fancy having Jimmy Carter," a villager shuddered).
A villager confides her support for the new legislator only in a hushed tone.
An especially wrenching moment shows a villager hugging his ancient olive trees, which are later torched by Israeli settlers.
"We are powerless and the institutions are not helping us", says one villager who travelled to the capital, Sofia, to join the demonstration.
"Now they fear no one," says a Palestinian villager in al-Mughayir.
