The Vantage

Here is the view from our apartment. At the far end is the main road where the white and blue bus is whizzing by. Beyond it lay the Ganapati Temple in white, our source of bells and chanting nightly. Between here and there is the usual variety of side-street activity; scooters, pedestrians, auto-rickshaws waiting for customers, cars and motorcycles. As you may notice, the road is quite shoddy by our standards but fairly adequate by theirs. That was my impression until yesterday. Yesterday the street team came to work. This entailed 10-hour days of ten men squatting and sweeping or shoveling or pick-ax-ing or whatever need to be done with the road debris. I can see how the body can be predisposed for certain asana based on what movement life gives us in repetition. Around here, open hips are the norm. Almost everybody (of the working classes) is fit from a hard days work. After this hard day, I saw that there were indeed piles of rock at the sides of the street, but the potholes weren't filled in, nor were the bumps smoothed out. Maybe this is just the first phase or maybe this is all they do, spruce it up. Clean it bachelor-style. There was also the coconut fetcher who climbed up Shobha's trees to knock down the next harvest. No rope, just a good grip on the tree and machette. Both times, despite the deadly elements threatening the street, life went on and around the problem. Scooter riders barely looked up when the coconuts fell nearby with our landlady directing traffic in her own way. As the street crew worked, the main street was blocked off at one end by a few stones to remind people to slow down when swerving around a squatting sweeper. I'm soon off to run an errand, and I will be sure to look both ways before crossing the street.
--- aeryk ---