Sitting recently on a non-air conditioned public bus, meditating on the mean streets of Dhaka—fumes, honking, shouting, pedestrians weaving through vehicles—I saw children standing on a pedestrian bridge dangling small objects from a string towards the bus windows. A woman walking with a man who was selling cold popcorn in plastic bags stopped, leapt, and tried to grab one. The children begin dangling their strings almost within reach, and she jumped about excitedly, laughing, in a state of utter concentration on her game and seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was standing between two soon-to-be-moving buses and her friend had abandoned her. While it is not good that people can adapt to ever more inhospitable living circumstances and pay so little heed to their well-being, there was something oddly reassuring in this woman’s ability to make magic out of the trivial.