A squaking crow and I keep each other company in the quiet time before the Indian dawn. My dateline is blurred; but I wake feeling fresh and ready for whatever this great big first day offers.
Driving from the airport yesterday was wild: as people teemed in all directions – and we swerved, beeped, the radio jangled and we laughed, stared, accelerated, breaked and got away with it. All travellers on that road (just) got away with it yesterday.
My friend, that I haven’t seen since 1986, and I caught up. Before India my stories sometimes made people wince – with their entertaining, occasionally bleak twists, frantic asides, or vertical ascents. But India softly hushed my lips. And my friend and I talked of our journeying from childhood to womanhood; and India continued – unsurprised, accepting and distracted. And we let it blow away in the warm afternoon cacophony, and I slept like a child.
