This morning’s walk back home: Women dotting freshly-washed front yards with rangoli in the making. The carpets of Honge, Copper Pod, and mahogany flowers on the roads. The smell of onion cooking as a lady makes morning palya at a mobile cart. Walkers with their morning filter kaapi, exchanging notes and spreading newspapers. Sunlight filtering through the trees, haloing the head of an old man as he walks with difficulty but determination. No school buses or sleepy-faced students. Milk packets and newspapers on mopeds,being distributed. A young girl stopping for a minute in front of a small shrine, her eyes closed over her hands folded in prayer. Cut watermelons making red stars. I reach my home, content, looking up at our resident bulbuls as their burbling song pours liquidly over the lawn.