Driving home one night this week, late, the usual route, I saw a man standing perfectly still on the divider of the Chirag Dilli flyover, silhouetted in the dust and high beams, looming over the left lane like a dead tree in a desert.
Tonight, the same place, around the same time, frowning against the frazzle of another social evening and those big truck headlights, I saw him again, perhaps not the same man but the same figure, a dark shape walking along the divider.
This morning, a naked man walked evenly across the width of the India Gate circle—all six lanes—with the air of a man going into the shower. Everything from his forehead to his penis to his feet was the same brown; his heels dark, his buttocks dusty.
Tonight, two different sets of street dogs in two different neighbourhoods followed me to my car. Others, strays, watched me approach, pupils wide in my headlights, and gave chase as I passed. They are barking now, here, as they were then, there.
Men are everywhere: lone loiterers ambling across intersections at an angle or waving their cellphones in the middle of some sidestreet. One is huddled in a watchman’s cabin outside a house in a nice neighbourhood, muttering; another waits outside Siri Fort auditorium with a bag on the ground at his side.
Earlier, at a traffic light, a man in a Mercedes shook his fist at me.
Later, in a house, I jerked away from a sudden flush of breath on my cheek.
Tonight, the same place, around the same time, frowning against the frazzle of another social evening and those big truck headlights, I saw him again, perhaps not the same man but the same figure, a dark shape walking along the divider.
This morning, a naked man walked evenly across the width of the India Gate circle—all six lanes—with the air of a man going into the shower. Everything from his forehead to his penis to his feet was the same brown; his heels dark, his buttocks dusty.
Tonight, two different sets of street dogs in two different neighbourhoods followed me to my car. Others, strays, watched me approach, pupils wide in my headlights, and gave chase as I passed. They are barking now, here, as they were then, there.
Men are everywhere: lone loiterers ambling across intersections at an angle or waving their cellphones in the middle of some sidestreet. One is huddled in a watchman’s cabin outside a house in a nice neighbourhood, muttering; another waits outside Siri Fort auditorium with a bag on the ground at his side.
Earlier, at a traffic light, a man in a Mercedes shook his fist at me.
Later, in a house, I jerked away from a sudden flush of breath on my cheek.
No comments:
Post a Comment