In the morning I went out to buy vadai to go with breakfast idlis. In our compound, workers were unloading a bullock cart of sand, shovelling it off the flat cart with their short-handled spades. The bullock was tethered nearby - white, humped, large, quiet. They had to move it aside for the car to get by.
One of the workmen who was re-plastering part of our house left a black handprint on the white wall - the pads of the palm and fingers, tapering to white spaces in between - a skeleton hand. Like Rajasthani women who mark the walls of their huts with hand prints, it said, "A human being was here."
We were talking about how brown the bamboos were most of the year, and how they greened up after a little rain. I said, "Fortunately, most of the plants don't mind our brackish water at all." Ramesh said, "They do mind - what can they do?" and I burst out laughing.
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