Evening Walk

I walk into a busy intersection. It is, essentially, a collection of small shops. Flower shops, tea shops, stationary, and hundreds of people milling about. Fruit peel decorates the sides of the road, and red, Communist Party flags hang from narrow ropes, fanning the bustle below. Cycle-rickshaws trundle about, their horns striking an evening melody of soft despair. It takes time to walk through this evening. It becomes very difficult to, at the same time, stare up at the deepening orange sky, clusters of clouds chiseled into half-forgotten stories. My body strikes an odd angle with the world around me, aloof, yet contented.

A little further the bustle thins. I turn on to the main road, blue, decrepit buses trying to edge out the rickety, yellow taxis. I stop for a moment. The road extends before me, covered by yellow, fading buildings to one side. Now I can see the sky in the background, its pink hues dancing over the colors of the lights emitted by the open stalls. Somewhere, a bangle glistens. Someone pushes me. I carefully step over the spit stains and walk on.

Old men with wrinkled faces study the blank spaces of their inner constructions. I walk further, my limbs falling into a quiet rhythm. A line of buses appears on my left. They stand empty, the drivers have gone to drink and maybe find whores somewhere, under the ambiguous streetlights. Two boys sit inside one of these dark buses, awkwardly feeling each others organs. A bawdy furniture shop shines to one side. The smell of urine protests. I turn again, onto an emptier, wider road, towards the bypass.

A line of woodwork shops appear on my left. Men sit before them, darkened with early age, breathing among the shreds of wood, the yellow bulbs reflecting of their thick glasses. Behind them, the stark brick walls of the shops cringe awkwardly at the outsider's gaze. A yellow bulb hangs from a spare wire in one shop, casting about a warm, stage-like glow around it. I can imagine an actress sitting on a rickety chair under it, staring into a mirror, at her many selves. A mutton shop in between, goat meat hanging under blue light. The obese butcher takes a few minutes to get up and step down onto the sidewalk. His son severs the meat at the cartilages. The smell of urine again. Now I can see the darkening flyover ahead.

To my left is some kind of a factory, behind a garbage-strewn, overgrown field. In the center of the field, is a large, nearly circular room, wide windows on all sides. The open widows and the shelves inside are covered with old newspapers. A tube-light shines inside, accompaniment to the hours of industrial drudgery. Two scrawny women stand inside, folding white sheets, one after the other. Behind, scarring the horizon of a by-now deep blue sky, are two tall buildings, multi-colored lights forming dots of corporate existence. It is beautiful and tragic, the many worlds in this makeshift city.

I walk straight on and the road rises. Dark spaces appear beneath me. There is a railway station beneath the flyover. I can see it now, tiny metal roofed stalls surrounding the tracks. A tiny bus stand on top of the flyover sits as if waiting for a hurricane to blow it away. The sound of a commuter train horn, as it enters from behind me. On top of the main station building rises a massive electricity pylon. Up above, it vanishes somewhere into an electric sky. Lightning flashes in the distance. The tiny lights of a tall apartment building glimmer under the distant sky.

The sky is a smoky black now, looming over a tattered city. I decide to turn around.