At the Mechanic's Yard

We had the car washed and went out; then discovered that the horn wasn't working. You can't drive without a horn here - not when bicycles dart out at you from side roads, and motorcycles and autorickshaws veer toward you just as you are passing them, by what a friend calls capillary action. So we stopped at our mechanic's yard. We had never been there before, because he comes home to pick up the car and take it for servicing or repair.

Ramesh has known this man since he was a boy, working under his father. Now he's tall and handsome, like a film star. He has also become very fancy lately, with stylish clothes and two cell phones, one for incoming calls and one for outgoing. So we expected great things - or at least something - but the place was a kind of rusted-hulk museum. There was a small open space and a ring of stalls, each containing a car that would clearly never be driven again. One pile of rust might have been a Model T Ford - a crank projected from the grille.

While Ramesh was getting the horn fixed - it turned out that part of it had filled with water when the car was being washed - I took a couple of pictures. The brightest colour in the yard was the oil drum:

Here's a corner that I liked because of the muted colours and textures. The door on the left leads to a squat toilet. That's not our car!