I’ve just finished dinner and stood out on my balcony for a few minutes, looking over my street, dark except where the streetlights cast yellow nets in which thousands of mosquitoes swarm. These are the days of Navaratri, a religious festival for the Hindu goddess. There is a big performance going on in the park a few streets behind my house -- a long stage with all male actors enacting, in nine nights, the epic story of Ram and his captured wife, Sita. The entirely unscripted dialogues, interrupted with bits of impromptu song, drift in great booms of sound over to us.
We have three dogs that belong to our street. No one owns them, but they do get left-over chapattis from several houses and I’ve heard that they hunt any cats who are silly enough to trespass their gates and go into the street. Each dog sleeps atop a pile of sandy dirt, cooler than the pavement, most of the night and most of the day. They don’t like to be petted, but they have taken to galloping enthusiastically toward my roommate and me when they see us -- Leslie gives them cookies. We have named the smaller couple Mister and Misses. The third, tall and lanky, hasn’t got a name yet.
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Originally written on October 6, 2008.
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