Morning, noon, and night

I'm outside at dusk. The hot of the day has settled into something soft, almost fluid - like the sea. Rare in this part of India, or at least in Bangalore.
The power is out, again. But with enough light under the still-pastel blue sky punctuated by occasional pink clouds slowly carrying in the stars, I sit and write.
Writing about nothing-in-particular is one of the greatest therapies available to the human experience, I think.

I can hear bells on girls' ankles jingling atop bare feet on the pavement below my balcony perch as they walk by, dusty from a day of building something, working just as hard as their male counterparts. Earning the same two dollar wage for ten hours of hauling the dry ingredients of cement atop their heads and into a building they will never be able to afford to live in.

Dogs barking, fighting over scraps of garbage, trotting beside the humans they long for, sniffing food-stuffed carry bags slung down at the hip. They will receive nothing save for maybe the empty bag and scrap-soiled foil and plastic packaging tossed out after the meal has been enjoyed by its purchaser.

Iron skillets, huge aluminum pots, and metal plates that remind me of military meals I've never seen in person but imagine are served in these same rudimentary dishes, bang around in the neighbor woman's outdoor tap. The only one she has, actually, as there is no kitchen in her family's office space converted to house. It seems to me that there are always dishes being washed in that tap. As if she literally has time for nothing other than cleaning up the vestiges of some forever-ongoing meal. It's either dishes, or clothes: slapping against the cement under cold running water, laundry soap formed into a hard bar rubbed against the cloth in a swoosh-swoosh of human labor. They own a car, I can't understand why on earth they don't buy a washing machine. 24 hours a day it seems she is washing something with all the gusto and noise you would expect in a task that requires an elbow grease Westerners can only ever know in the figurative sense.

Peddlers cruise by on their bikes or on foot, interrupting her chores and my writing long enough to make an impression. She buys vegetables - I listen to their 'lagala' and feel ashamed that I still don't really understand much of anything in the way of Hindi or Kannada.
The sounds of street sellers, while I don't know the actual pronunciations or translations of their callings, are at least easily reconcilable with whatever it is they are peddling.
I know when the guy selling coconuts is on his way down my street, of course. The word he cries out is a happy gentle 'Po-ahp!,' and it brings me always to the balcony to wait for the two coconuts he expects we will want.

The 'mooooosaaaaaaaambay!' is a guy selling tangerine oranges that don't peel properly - their skin is thin and stuck tightly to the fruit. Nothing like the tangerines I remember from the States, and not on my shopping list.

'Paaayyypoooooray!' is the man on a bicycle with a basket on the back full of newspapers. He's not selling today's headlines but buying those of yesterday. He pays Rs. 5 per kg and sells them for 7 to businesses who wrap them up into fabulous little packagings for grocery items. I love these flat, handleless, handmade bags and save the ones that sport magazine articles about Bollywood stars and government officials. It's such a wonderful expression of recycling, their newspaper bags.

'Tomaaaatohh, lagalaaaaaaaaa' I can't understand the entire cry given by the vegetable men, I hear tomato and know who they are and what they've got, but I cannot differentiate one word from the next after the first leaves their lips.

There are men carrying buckets full of tools atop their heads, offering in their loudest and most convincing voices to handyman whatever needs fixing. Not too far behind them comes the ironing-guy who walks his wide, flat, blue cart into the neighborhood always to be bombarded with piles of freshly washed clothes in need of pressing. He will stuff a massive iron (made literally of the same) full of dark coals, light them on fire, wait for them to heat the wide flat bottom and get to work.
Hamid-the-bachelor had utilized these same services toward the betterment of one of his favorite shirts only to find it char-pitted in places by accidental but clearly inevitable falling ashes.

'Papaaaaaaiiii' brings fresh papaya laid out in a single file patchwork of yellow, green, orange, and ruby-red atop the same blue cart they all opt for.

'Mahsoohl!' is the garbage lorry, manned by three guys in flannel shirts, cigarettes perpetually dangling from lips, closely flanked by an army of ever-hopeful dogs. I find it ironic that they will once in a while knock on the doors of this street asking to be paid while there is more than one pile of garbage easily noticed by any passer-by and regularly picked through by beggar women and their children on silent, very-early-mornings when the street is empty of eyes to spite them.

'Leaaaaylah!' is the walking penny-shop with plastic bangles, colorful deity stickers, and other childhood goodies, along with whisk brooms, dustbins, small buckets, and coarse kitchen towels that look dirty even when they're new; everything an Indian wife needs to clean her house.
'Chaiyah!' is the too-sweet but wonderfully delicious on a cold day milk masala tea Indians adore. Poured from a large metal cask strapped atop the back of a bicycle, the creamy brown drink arrives piping hot into clear plastic cups so small they resemble the dosage indicator that accompanies cough syrup bottles. Rs. 5 for one - I used to drink so many I'd come away swooning from all that sugar.

What sounds like 'Quesedilla!' is a man and his young son selling handkerchiefs, underwear, and t-shirts. The kerchiefs, garishly colored with floral patterns or flag motifs, are set atop the cart on a wire display. In this way the latest, hottest selling patterns are offered up.

The list of goods and services available is as endless as the stream of their respective sellers; stalking the streets in search of a living, straining to be heard among the cacophony of competing voices, every day: morning, noon, and night.

And now, it is too dark for me to write, the current still cut off at the end of the street somewhere so that the only light I can make out for the entirety of our neighborhood is the red burning coals inside the ironing man's contraption. I wonder if he will continue to iron in the dark.