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Brooklyn and India
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Brooklyn and India

93

a large circular clay bowl. Wrist-watches and big feet, toes curled. Green lizard down the wall. Dry leaves sewn together, covers for the take-out cups of curd, piled on the floor. Wooden cash box but the bills kept in an old yellow tin can on the shelf. Metal pail, rivets on the side. The brothers: one lumbering in space the other anchored with his left leg under him the night extended. It is said they take a lot of bhang. One of the serving boys with ten pice wedged in the folds of his left ear. Who told me about the Sadhu who could put seven Rupees in his penis. Carrying money without pockets. Use the natural places of the body. Milk sweets, light tan in rows, subject to a day's elements of dust and flies and hands. The company of men, never woman. The two brothers twins of spirit in two bodies. Cheat at the first opportunity. Ram paid 75 pice for a glass of milk. He had milk every night here for a year. Till someone told him others were only paying 60 pice. No favors for a good customer. Brother's alike, separate but together in movement and mind. An interdependency of being. Milk, hot sweetness with sugar, carried to the table gingerly in the palm of one hand co-balanced by two fingers of the other. Hot, spoon, stir,

94

sip, flecks of block caught in the white foam. The presence of the two brothers.

This last is from an undated piece written in April, strangely this and the piece before written recently, both and with the drinking of a hot liquid.

"I want to get out of this locality. It is too depressing. You ask someone how they feel and they all say, bad. My heart, my liver always trouble. Ninety percent of the people you say hello to always greet you with tales of how terrible things are. You know it is the poverty causes it. Every day the same, day after day. It is depressing. It will drive you crazy too if you stay long enough - the milk in you country is it pure? Here it is always diluted. If a lota costs one rupee and it's diluted with water, and you promise to pay three rupees to get the same amount undiluted, the milk man will still dilute it. It is not a matter of money. It has become a habit. Everything is diluted, nothing is pure. There is no hope. The whole social structure has to be changed, but it will never happen." -Conversation with a man about fifty, government employee.

May 31. Sun

Every pan shop has a large mirror, for the customer to see themselves. Indian men are quite vain about their appearance. They always take a long admiring look at themselves, straighten their shirt collars, smooth down their mustache, or comb their hair. They will even watch themselves as they put pan in their mouths and start chewing, gazing with satisfaction at their images.

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Brooklyn and India
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