Moving Pictures II

This is a discussion about water storage structures. It's in Hindi and the audio isn't great. For those who can understand Hindi: if you fiddle with your speakers you should be able to make out what they're saying.




This was the ride to the Jain temple. Empty, as it was pretty early. The ride back was pretty ridiculous. Imagine this exact bus, packed to capacity, even the roof was crowded with people. I waved him down from the side of the road in the midday scorching heat (I was even advised by a goat herd accompanied passing farmer to get in the shade). The conductor/kid running the show jumped out, and yelled over and over again to run as fast as I could, "दौड़ना! दौड़ना! दौड़ना!"-- and get on the bus. The ride back was so packed, sweat dripped from passenger to passenger, every part of my body touching somebody or something. We would 'stop' periodically, and the kid, slowly losing his voice, would machine-gun fire the order, "उतरो!उतरो!उतरो!उतरो!", until the various spinsters, school children, and workers jumped out of the bus--while it moved at a snail's pace. I don't think we actually stopped once. I estimated about 40 people in the space you see above, with another 20 on top. Note: the ceiling you see is only about 5'9'' in height. Being about 6'2" myself, you can imagine the state of my head on the ride back-- strangely Klimt-like locked and fully cocked to the side, the L-bracket formed by my neck cradled the head of some old lady.