Reticence unexplained

February 9th, 2012. Sunil stops his car outside a run down cluster of buildings, the gate unlocked and ajar. I step from him into wind. The sign reads Thai Embassy, blue behind white, other words in Hindi too, and Sunil speeds away, stop start, stop start, his driving explained. Funnels of exhaust shooting through corroded metal piped and through my corroded veins. I walk to the cracked gate house, paint peeling, and two men, mustached and mismatched and surprised at my skin, stand behind rusty bars. The older says, the embassy is under construction, here's the address of the place to apply for visas. The younger stares. The older is overly friendly, helpful, and lingers in talk and words. Married, without a ring, all Indian men. Wives submerged in home life, husbands forgetting presence. 
I take a rickshaw to the new building, Tolstoy House on Tolstoy Marg. How many working near have read, can read? Sign in, first floor, two flights up, over there. And I smile and the men smile back, always. I take a number, many sit in the waiting room in front of glass booths where stressed Indians check and stamp and copy papers. Monks in burgundy draping sit, eyes fluttering in sleep, all others Indian men frantically filling forms and others watching green numbers flash for their turn. 
A woman motions to me, and my token is discarded. I know no lines. My process painless, I leave within minutes, you can pick up your visa tomorrow, and she talks with her eyes, framed with hot pink bejeweled earrings, dangles distracting from eyebrows too thin. 
We sleep through alarms spaced six minutes apart, interrupting finally dreams and nightmares and thrashing noisy sleep. The sky, even at 1:47 is still not black, cool blue light pollution, and then gold and red glows from lamps and temples. Jassi drives us to Agra, where we sleep in the car next to tented homes and a cow sleeping also as twirls of color enter the sky. We walk to a dry river as the sun rises over a grey, then dusty brown, then gleaming Taj Mahal. Cameras snatching and snapping, documenting what has been seen before.