January 8, 2011. In sanded and shining shades of brown, differentiations of color, this city is defined. In puddles collected on the sides of honking roads, paint chipped from walls and windowsills, leaves of scrawny trees in medians, covered by dust and pollutants. The skin of wealthy women, lustrous, illuminated and exfoliated, almost golden reflecting off shining Chanel purses, the faces of poor boys, cracked and grey, infections pushing on skinny limbs. Rotting teeth of old men, changing from yellow to deep and fading ivory, the speckles of black.
Dogs, mangy and mud covered trot across humming streets, the cars unclean and dented. Cows with hipbones jutting, connected by sagging skin to a protruding spinal cord, dig in plastic bags of trash for food, cast from trucks carrying laborers crammed, standing, into loud hustling compartments. The exhaust pouring onto motorcyclists, wrapped in faded leather and shoes with holes, toes poking through. Monkeys screaming in bushes next to highways, the bridge below filled with children and families and women, few men. Cats shrieking on the porch outside my flat, one throwing a mouse, bloody and still alive, against my glass door, again and again, long past death, still, again. Used books curling and cigarettes, yellowed and discarded.
Brown, here too, my shoes tattered and jackets dusty, my fingernails discolored from polish. Except for me, my shoulders fair, my legs untanned,I am immersed in dust, in dirt, in ruddy Bollywood lyrics, in burnt tones of the man selling newspapers, calling in resonant chants outside my ground-floor window, disturbing my colored dreams.
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