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a loudspeaker for a wedding or religious or political or to announce a new movie and blast away at your eardrums.

Sept 30

Indians are as accustomed to buying sparsely and only what they need at that particular moment. (One cigarette, etc.) Today I saw a boy getting his fountain pen filled at a store. The storekeeper has a quart bottle of ink on hand to fill pens. Why buy your own bottled of ink, you'd have to lay out a Rupee, when you can go down to your neighborhood store and fill up for a few pice. - The woman in my house are always running out of things, because they never buy any new food staple until the old one is gone. So they are always asking me for sugar, tea, coffee, etc.

Sept 30

Rickshaw-driver, married, wife in village, no children: "I'm doing my duty, it is in God's hands." Rickshaw rent Rs 1.50 per day (20 cents) he picks it up at 6:00 in the morning turns it in at 4:00 in the afternoon, averages about Rs 5 per day (65 cents) after paying the rental charge. Was working in Bengal, more chance for scope there. Most people look down on it but in Vanarasi all you can do is drive a bicycle rickshaw. Stays with younger brother wants to get married, tiring work.

". . . is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men." Labyrinths - Borges p 42

Sept 30

The streets mobbed with people, crowds, noise deafening every side street filled, bumping against each other, hysterical movement, children on shoulders laughing at the far end of a long filled street, the Maharajas procession passes, tiny by distance against the masses of people.

Oct 11, 70

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Dushehra Oct 10, 70

Bosch again evoked on the mud-filled steps of Dassemath Ghat. The first painted clay figure of Durga is carried own at about 4:00 surrounded by a group of men from the ashram of a woman saint. The banks of the river are already crowded. The police have set up an elaborate system of barricades which as usually overcomplicate the flow of traffic. The festival is at its best after sunset in the dark unphotographable light, the banks jammed with houseboats, the huge images set on one end, the roofs, every inch of the rest of the top of the boat taken up by human bodies, incense burns at the feet of the Goddess, male dancers holding a clay cup in each hand, filled with burning coconut husk, do an energetically simple dance, swirling smoke in font of the goddess paying her homage for her victory over evil. The air is bombarded with batteries of loudspeakers from every boat, some playing Hindi movie songs, some amplifying the beating of drums and chants but all at top level piercing sound. From the water crammed with small boats, bumping into each other in the dark. The large houseboats each with its goddess unravel lit by a gas lantern or the flames from the coconut husks. Dense with people, women usually in a separate houseboat, side by side. The sloping shore massed with people, an image being born down the mud-packed slope on bamboo poles precarious held up by young men, illuminated in the flashes of burning flares held on long poles, entourage of drummers and bands. The screeching sound filled air breaking your brain, jumbled masses of boats and people and goddesses not a scene for detail as much as epic spectacle. Dark molded hulks of boats, sparsely lit crowds, reflected in patches of water between