Dusk

The little child – I think it’s a girl – in the worn black trousers and once-white banian crawls speedily under the charpoy, raising little puffs of dust. The slightly older boy, unencumbered by any clothes at all, circles the charpoy twice before ducking down to find the girl. She shrieks with laughter as she comes out from under the charpoy. The boy takes her face in both hands and plants a kiss on her forehead.

dusk –

the subdued chattering

of a bulbul