I remember walking slow. The vegetables and paint bright, even glowing, and the market whirling--children chasing each other, a man grabbing and pushing another, two women with their wares, laughing. One heart beat per step. All around the cruelty and pure affection of the heart and mind--people arguing, embracing, spitting, ignoring, ushering you in for tea. Time and space throngs and clots and courses onward. I get a straight razor shave. My skin burns. The rickshaw driver and I never speak. Just look briefly in one another’s eyes, before I ask to take his photograph. He nods, sure. The human mirror is flawed, ambiguous--a phone number scrawled in the bottom corner, cracks from a stray cricket ball running like veins; the fog of another's breath. It’s impossible to distinguish who I am and what I am not when looking into this man's eyes. Is that his longing? My sadness? What are we carrying? Over time, questions multiply until everything loses coherence--maybe you aren’t sure whether you miss your friends or whether you miss the idea of missing them; you’re not sure if you’re callous toward beggars, or just consistent with your ideals. The illusion of control washes away in a landslide of uncertainties and the jabber of a foreign language. All that remains is the steady flux of things unanswered. Knowing gives you black and white. Not knowing gives you a brush and a bunch of different colors. I take a picture of the rickshaw driver. Smile as best I can. I remember my heart is beating, and my feet turn and begin to move. The gangly teenager next to the rickshaw wears no shirt and his Playboy boxers show. Bollywood music blares from his phone. A cow rummages through trash next to him. Pigeons squabble atop the white temple across the road.
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