propreantepenultimate

the dogs wake me every morning between 0300 and 0400 for their scheduled street fight – their sorting the day’s hierarchy? a requisite sacrifice, maiming, exile? as if hundreds of canine demons are auctioning their souls on the block of eternal hunger, an experimental band barely clinging to the cliffs of sound jamming on that nearby abandoned rooftop. institutional and community life without their euphemisms, a polycacophonous rooster birthing the corruption of the day. i sit on my bed of camels for the hour’s free concert – war eventually exhausting itself (jabes writes within the human moral realm even evil must sleep) – this audio textbook of history, resting afterwards on the grass of dreams.

while this town is softer, gentler than many in northern india, it inevitably has its aggressions. only here have motorcycles and tuktuks aimed for and hit me – though lightly, as they stopped – always young men thinking it a joke. others – of the same tribe – sneer as they pass, spitting at my feet. less subtle than the routine aggressions of my home culture. pros and cons.

though tourists are here, they’re relatively few and disappear once out of town on the rural roads. there i’m a sufficient novelty that the contents of every fifth motorcycle are compelled to say hello, a decent percentage of these pulling alongside, i guess to fully manifest the exchange, ensure the white man knows the indian exists.

one gaggle of 3 boys (they all look 12 but the driver says he’s 18), initially amusing, circle back to me so many times, take uncountable selfies with me, ask me to record phrases in their phone then laugh outrageously, that i finally get annoyed and tell them to go home and watch porn.

this is a town of bands. bandi. i’ve lost track of the number that have passed below – led by 6 or 7 male uniformed brass- and drum-players, followed by colourful females carrying jars. looks like pt barnum should emerge, with a topper and dancing elephants. (as music, i prefer the dogs fighting.) the animals as usual are insouciant, though the monkeys and humans watch, bound in camaraderie by their eyes.

cows, despite being holy here, survive on plastic bag scraps and wire. their indifference to all manner of proximate abuse, noise, traffic is almost admirable. the dogs and wild boars too – the former often curled sleeping on the road during the day while vehicles go racing by honking loudly centimetres from their dreams. what trust! or, rather, what enculturation.

the guest house i’m staying at is run by a family whose living area is the lobby. sometimes i enter and 9 adult humans and 5 children are congregated, tv on, the tumbled troupe all gossip and screaming. i keep probiotics in their freezer and as i obtain a pill one morning an adult asks me what is your disease?

the proprietor’s son who does the cooking says you write too much. (that’s a new one.) reminds me of a recent paternalistic email from a bureaucrat in the housing co-op i live in – all power to the imagination! he hypocritically closes. these inane expressions of conformists, who are given residence in the house of language, born into the temple of imagination, growing to use their habitats, their birthrights, as walls and missiles. endearing in a sense i suppose. but the zoo after a few visits loses its appeal and one seeks possibility outside the societal cages of virtuous enforcement and obeisant commonplaces.

 

for some reason i’m reminded – consciousness even yet sprouts through the hard soil of ubiquitous establishment and cliché – of bruno schultz, who knew his uselessness, and used it, despite the variegations of human force and treachery, to colour life’s long night.