India !

Johannes Manjrekar

Noon heat

It is so pitilessly hot that all bird and animal life seems to have withdrawn into the shade. But the traffic continues to toil through the heat haze hanging over the tar road. A young woman in a furry-textured T shirt is driving her motorbike so slowly that I wonder why she doesn’t speed up a bit to get out of the sun. In a moment a young man on a cycle catches up with her. She looks at him for a bit with no expression on her face. When she finally permits herself a smile, she does not flash it, but allows it to unfold slowly till it reaches the edge of her face. It hovers there for a while before evaporating into the noon heat.

melting tar
a bit of silk cotton drifts
across the road

Johannes
2010-05-12

Copyright Johannes Manjrekar, 2010
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