ARRIVAL
A power cut in the capital. A few generators spluttered in the night. Charcoal fires spread putrid smoke across unlit roads. Delhi was a city of shadows, both stationary and in motion. People stretched out in neat rows on pavements, buried beneath thin blankets, oblivious to the smog and suffocating heat around them, trying to snatch some sleep before another hard day would shake them awake again. Between buildings, dilapidated or new, groups of rickshaw wallahs, families, and animals were clustered around small fires, burning anything they could find. Singed rubber smells mixed with charcoal smoke.
Cows ambled around or slept standing up. The bovines moved in a parallel universe. Oblivious to human activity, to the cityscape, perhaps certain of their divine status, they wandere
