the banjaras or gypsies understood life better - nothing is permanent; don't get attached. this September and October it has been raining like crazy in Delhi. our walls are getting soaked and the water is seeping in. our laundry room on top of our lil terrace is turning to mush with all the water; we are just praying its roof doesn't cave in before we manage to put up some jugaad protection. the people I learned to know in the summer already feel hazy as if they were dreamed. those i have known for many years also keep flipping in who they claim or show themselves to be. and then there are the new ones i am getting to know... one reads and has been giving me books, its rare i meet someone who has read what i have and more. its rare we go into a bookstore and i show them something and there is a history of what we have said before that gives it meaning, or we realize upon random browsing in the store that we have read the same book recently, something very few people around us have. and then there are the indefatigable ants in our kitchen who keep finding new holes and gaps in our walls to travel to and from, and we keep barely catching up with them in plugging the holes with tube-paint-caulk. sometimes in doing so i think i bury them alive in these holes, wondering whether there is an exit for them on the other side somewhere such that they have tunneled through the bricks in our walls. i also wonder what the new arrivals to the now sealed hole are thinking, whether they panic when they suddenly turn around and reconsider their path, what they tell each other when they meet on their path in opposite directions - the ones bringing news back from the disaster and warning others to abandon their journey to it, and how they deal with the loss (if that is what it is) of their peer as they persevere on simply exploring and finding a new hole a new home a new purpose. can they also smell sugar and crumbs of carbs? is their community the organism? and what do they think of us.