A French clown sits in a garden in Gujarat. He is rehearsing, blowing up a balloon using his trumpet. Even when he is not rehearsing, the children around him continue laughing at the seemingly boneless comedy of his body.

In January 2001 an earthquake in Gujarat killed more than 20,000 people. In February 2002 there were Hindu-Muslim riots that threatened to spread across the whole country. In November 2004, in this garden just outside Ahmedabad, the city where the riots raged, a woman is suspended over the heads of the clown and a small crowd of children. She is cocooned in thin cotton 20ft above them, the planes of her body pressing through the sheeting as she emerges: a trapeze-artist butterfly. A strange circus has come to town. Read the full article…

Financial Times, Dec 18, 2004