Little boy among thousands. Thousands of big, smelly, sweating, standing men and women. Everywhere he only sees a great press of legs- covered by saris, uncovered under dhotis, legs brown and yellow and black and dirt-covered. The overpowering stink of sweat. A trickle of sweat gathers and slides down the line of his spine, making him feel ticklish and uncomfortable, as though the heat was making fun of him. He tugs impatiently at the hand holding his, bawls some complaint, is shushed by the surrounders. Face screwed up in a determination to wail, he hears now that they are mostly quiet, as quiet as such a horde can be. They are listening to something. He tugs at the larger hand dangling at his other side. His father looks down at him over his moustache, and then in a moment of pity or abstraction, hoists him up onto his shoulders.
That's better. Now he can see something, for his father is a tall man with comfortable, broad shoulders. Now it is the sun that beats down, while the drops of sweat continue to trickle down the length of his nose. There are many, many people, as far ahead as he can see, right upto a sort of platform, a stage. A covered stage. And on the stage, in the shade- he screws up his eyes to see- There is a long box. And behind the box, there is a man. A man who is talking. A man whose voice is echoing in the relative quiet of the field. An old, fair-skinned man, bald, with spectacles on his nose, who is speaking angrily. And the men around are frowning a little, frowning at the heat, or to see the little man, or at what the man is saying, the boy cannot tell. They are frowning up at him, and standing still. And then, at something he says, a great shout wells up, all around. A shout, a cry of strength, of support for this little man. ...ki Jai ! is the shout, and it too echoes around until the man begins to speak again. For a moment, the cry pushed back the heat, held back the irritation and flies and lack of wind and rising dust and maddening glare and shouted defiance. Then the man shouted something very loudly, and so did they. He shouted again, they shouted too, until the two sounds merged into one, and the boy forgot where he was, forgot he was hungry, forgot he was uncomfortable, forgot he did not understand what they were shouting, and shouted loud, loud, his head thrown back, out of the emptiness in his belly.

And then a tide of young men, an irresistible tide of snarling, rushing humanity, swept past him and flung itself with picks and crowbars at a great old mosque...

Why can't I write stories ?

kaveri noon

the stream meandered away downhill, to where the farmers and fishermen and regional politicians were squabbling about whose it was, and then down and out to the sea.

Brown, and God alone knows how deep, reflecting the elephants bathing on the far bank for relief from the beating sun, and the mahouts calling, and the little ones splashing and the mothers keeping a wary eye out, flickering through the dancing shade and unwavering sunlight..

Little tadpoles excitedly darting just below the surface of the lazy river while, deeper in, the great black fish wove serpentlike and vanished into the cool, the dark brown of the riverbed, deep below, away from the world, away from the angry, piercing light...

Up the hill on this side were the plantations- the sounds of the workers picking coffee, arabica, robusta, drifted down, the rustle of leaves as they pushed through them, the sound and smell of work to do on a hot summer afternoon, while the earth feels like sleep, while it curls up under the light shade of the silk-cotton trees as the boy with dirty shorts and a dog are doing, back there, out of everyone's way...

A mahout lifts his eyes to peer across the riverbank, because he could have sworn that in the shade near the bend of the river, a girl with her sandalled legs hugged tightly to her chest was sitting, watching.. but there is noone. It must have been a trick of the sharp light glancing off the ripples in the water there, as the water eddies around that brown rock in a gurgle of flowing away... A girl with large eyes, silently watching...

A drift of wind travels down the river, balancing on a current.. As it wafts down the still afternoon land, it looks around, searching through the trees for a little girl whose face he can touch and see her smile softly, sadly, at his already retreating back, but there is no little girl. So he touches the little boy in shorts, who turns over on his back, and the little dog stretches and murmurs a bark in his sleep, and the silk-cotton, freed from the bursting pods, falls...