Come take a walk with me!

Okay, so I thought that in the interest of giving some sense of what life is actually like here, I'll do descriptions of little things. I'll start with a walk down Rashbehari Avenue, or at least a small part of it. This is the way I walk to dance and mime class, if I don't take the bus. Okay, so here we are. On the right is a row of shops, selling some sort of clothing: colorful sarees, salvar kameezes, etc., or electronics, or sweets (they're laid out in pyramids in a glass case), or food (idlys, rolls, momos (dumplings), reads a sign out front). The ground is made of red bricks, and you have to watch your footing on the uneven, dusty ground. On the left, near the street, are a variety of things: a cha (tea) stand, with hot tea steaming in a metal pot, a man shining shoes, a barber shaving someone, a stand with bangles, earrings, hair clips, and other pretty things laid out, a man or woman sitting on the ground with piles of oranges, bunches of bananas, shiny white pear-like things, what look like bruised cherry tomatoes, and other familiar and un-familiar fruits and vegetables, a stand where two men are stirring massive (ie 3 feet across) metal bins of lentils or cauliflower, to be eaten with the hands from a plate made of leaves, and of course there will be a stray dog or two sleeping in the sun, a homeless person completely covered with a blanket, and several half-naked, dirty children running around, and on the corner someone with a pile of green coconuts who will, when asked, hack off the top and give one to you with a straw, to drink the milk. The smells are a mixture of the food, the tea, human excrement, and dirt, Bengali and traffic sounds (lots of horns!) fill the air, and everywhere is a litter composed of the small clay cups in which the tea is served, leaves, newspaper, food wrappers, and just plain dirt. The sky is a dusty grey, polluted as it is, and winter sun shines wanly through the trees that line the street.
And that's just a 20-foot stretch of one street. Life here is crazy!

And random thought, for most of you I am writing from the future... creepy!