Shashidhar Sastry

Small cottage with a garden. Sitting outside. Dusk. Clearing on a gentle slope with woods in the distance. One more cottage down the slope. Chimney smoking wisps trailing away to the right. Green grass everywhere. Dusk. Smell of pine trees.

In the garden looking down the valley at the lakeside promenade.  Winding roads coming up the steep mountainside and past the house.  Flowering shrubs lining the outer edge of the garden.

India, decades ago. First Class carriage. Teen me. Leaning back against the thick windowed steel door ajar at the end of the bogie. Wind in my hair. Sideward hand holding the long vertical handrail. No one around. Train running at a fair clip. Countryside strolling by languidly. Green fields. Curving track. Distant engine between frenetic wheels

Old part of Bombay. Defunct cotton mill, large and cavernous. Car left in a lane. Waiting alone in the mill for someone late. Supine on a wooden cot by the little office, hands behind head. Mill floor filled with silent machinery and looms, some tall, some meek, all dusty. A few sheet-covered hulks, others dark