Scene 1
I’m walking towards public bathrooms when I pass a woman who has the appearance of an Indian laborer. She hands me a key to a locked outhouse which is a much cleaner toilet. I am just about to squat to take a pee when there is banging on the door and a male voice calling for Vasanthi. I assume it was the name of the woman who gave me the key.
I open the door slightly to reveal I am not Vasanthi inside but who nevertheless was using the toilet legitimately as I was given the key. The man looked passed me at a couple bare open shelves mounted below the roof near the corner and said a snake had been seen there recently and he had come to check.
Scene 2
Raphael and I are out walking when we realize it’s going to rain. We happen to be passing a squat rectangular structure that looks like a one room shack and with a quick glance at each other that confirms we have the same thought, we turn into the dwelling that’s situated just off the path. No sooner had we entered then we hear the deluge pouring out from the sky. We had found shelter in the nick of time.
The darkened room is bare but not empty. I first see one person rolled up in a blanket on the floor in the corner opposite the door and then realize there’s another person sleeping to the side of the door we had just opened. They acknowledge our arrival but nothing else. We sit down on our haunches on the dirt floor to wait out the storm.
Scene 3
The path we’re traveling on turns muddy and soon a raging body of water is flowing across the path in front of us. Remnants of a building that looks like it had either been bombed, or on which an earthquake had done a number, emerge above the water with rebar and concrete pillars that lend handholds as we enter and prepare to cross. I am ahead and with my mind made up, I push my bicycle into the turbulence and forge ahead. But in a split second I realize the water is too deep and quickly make a u-turn shaking my head indicating the impossibility of crossing.
On the dry path again beside the angry water, a man in uniform who might be a policeman stands with open notepad and pen and by the look on his face we intuit that entering the water area was illegal. We, of course, were unaware of our trespassing. When the officer asks for my address that is specifically a P. O. address, I hold up a document so he can see the contents, and explain that I have only a street address, he resigns to letting us go free.
