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modulated loud and soft in undesigned turns. Distant gong, temple bell. A cat fleetly, almost unobserved, white flash through the room, leaps to the window, balanced a moment at the threshold. Unconcerned as to private territory; vanishes silently. A radio, Hindi film music muted behind walls. Otherwise no substantial sounds. Pieces, abbreviated uttering, noises of the human condition. Mrs Singh brings the evening tea: the sound when you swallow that only you can hear, passes unnoticed in the rush of warm sweet liquid.

May 30, 70

Night Interior - Benares - 10:00 pm

One fluorescent tube. Blue enamel trim. Pale green crumbling walls with a thousand smudges of hands. Six men sit at a table, two share a chair, their arms tight around each other. Moslems. White caps, checkered lungis. Tables, wooden worn imprinted with the wet circles of glasses gone. Beru and his brother Madan, big husky milk walker caste, bulging stomachs, mustached white t-shirted bears. Madan always squatting in the open shop in front by the case of sweets. The Muslims are having lassi white clad figures with dark skins, friends, balding together. They joke, one puts his arm in a lover's embrace around the neck

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of the man next to him, heads together. The young boys who wait on table, lounge tired on empty chairs. Low ceiling, an overhead fan makes the voices seem lower, pitched, the street noises of rickshaw bells more distant. A young man reads the paper with his lips, mustache of two small wisps extending from his nostrils, black hair long in front, darkening his forehead casting shadows under his eyes. Night interior friendlier than Hopper's lonely public places. Shabbier furniture, broken chairs braced against the wall to keep from collapsing, dirty. Sandals on the concrete floor, a man, legs pulled under him squats on the chair. This is a place where most know each other, where conversations are overheard willingly. Arms over the backs of chairs. A cigarette is lit. A stone table. The burning match passed to the men at the next table. Calendars of [ILLEGIBLE: looks like "effincent"] Shiva and Durga. Brown feet, earth contact-flattened. Ice chiseled in a dirty cloth by pounding with a wooden paddle, thud, thud, thug. Unchanged skimpy t-shirt, striped once blue and white undershorts, barefoot, smiles. Tea cup, the loop handle held all the fingers of one hand. Two boys having lassi, talking, one reaches over and fingers the other's shirt between two fingers with tactile absentmindedness for minutes. Eyes on the street Jane Jacobs, the natural flow of inside and out no separation. Sets down the paper with finality, raises both arms slightly, half yawn. Curd dripped out into a clay cup from