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Each day the river rises 6 inches to a foot, what you walked upon last night is seven feet under water. Every ghat is slowly becoming isolated, now for long stretches you can no longer walk along the river from Ghat to Ghat. The Ganges is mud, the current is strong, carrying branches of foliage swiftly by. I have seen several dolphins leap to the surface, but most of the time they stay hidden. The whole view of the city has changed as you look north along the river, the buildings seem whiter and brilliantly clear against the darkly clouded sky. The monsoon has been light so far. Days are overhung with storm clouds, lightning shows in the distance but the rain passes us by. But the air is damp, humid (yesterday 95% humidity) uncomfortable, my room smells and feels like a tomb. The atmosphere is heavy with unfulfilment and dreary. Mildew on clothes, mold on bread left overnight, the varnished covers of paperbacks stick together, minute bugs crawl from back pages, ants eat my vitamin pills, the pillow wet and clammy, sweat drips from my hand to the paper, the walls are divided by a change in color, the lower half darker due to the creeping moisture.

image: an old man in dhoti climbs the stairs, a small brass bowl in his left hand. He squats on the crumbling texture of the roof. Facing north, he takes some wheat flour from the bowl and lets it descend from beneath his fingers his right hand in a straight line on the roof. He moves to the east repeats the same movement, then west and south. He is feeding the insects, because it will please God. A concrete gesture.

Aug 8,70

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The magician is attired in a tattered, unbelievably wrinkled black tuxedo pinned on both sides of the chest with row upon row of ribbons and metals. The comedic travesty of dignity completed by his bare feet and the open color of a crumbled, once white shirt. Two equally shabby assistants uneager for duty. Curtains and props, as shopworn and uncared for as the tuxedo, at a stage of being neither new or old but nevertheless with a sense of eternity about them. The audience having paid its 10 pice (1 cent plus) is seated on boards laying on the ground (The men separated from the women by some barbed wire string across the front fourth of the space) is enjoying the show in the manner it would enjoy anything that moved in front of them. Neither applauding nor unapplauding. On the raised platform, the magician drearily goes through his routine: the colored scarves from nowhere, climaxed by the Indian flag, the water endless poured from a silver jug, the rice that turns to water (being a big careless with this but revealing half the gimmick) the disappearing pigeons, the handcuffs and escape from the locked trunk. Everything clothed in an air of defeat, everything working against poor, fragile illusion.

Aug 17, 70

The perfume still clings to my shirt. Ram was late, appointments, arrangements, meetings are always jumbled. No phone to say "I'll be an hour delayed." Walk to the burning Ghat among a large crowd of mourners some singing. Large cloud formations, the sun clinging to the highest layers. The river vast swiftly flowing mud colored. Distant rain slants from low dark shapes on the horizon above the