city

Your senses are overwhelmed by the hundreds of people who walk by you and with you, by the noises of rush hour, by the cool evening breeze that brushes away the heat and humidity of the day. You look at the dogs that sleep at every street-corner; sometimes they follow you and you throw a piece of bread towards them as you sit at a roadside tea-stall and silently sip tea from an earthen cup. When the relentless rain pours down on you, you wonder if it will ever stop; as tiny rivulets of water make their way down your brow you can smell the wet earth and like a mother it listens to every word you say. You gaze at the gaudy lights and colours of the fairs that emerge like the flowers of spring, you feel the hard stubbornness of the city as you trip over the cracks in the pavement. The vibrant colours at the stalls selling flowers outside temples leave you transfixed, the voice of the muezzin ringing through the heavy air, calling devout Muslims to prayer, wakes you at the crack of dawn, the smoke from an old bus makes you cough. The colour red remembers you as you cross the busy road where you once saw a motorcyclist lying in a pool of blood after getting hit by a car. When you return, after being away for too long, the wide-open sky above the maidan, the heart of the crowded city, where grazing sheep bump into you and little children go for pony rides, where lovers sit under old banyan trees looking at the stars, tells you to plan a game cricket with your friends, just as you had a decade ago, and you realise that you are home.