Bara Bagh Cenotaphs:
Life still sounds within the empty golden tombs jutting out from sand and stones and skeletal broken twigs
First customers for the guide - 50 rupees, first customer - 30 rupees please
The broken tooth gravestones stand askew among the yawning columns as sparrows call from dome to dome
The guides flit, shadows watching like the ghosts long since moved on.
Next first customer arrives - he goes.
There is no death here - only absent memory created and left.
It's all gone to pieces.
***
Villages:
Brushwood doors and log piles
Mud huts and domes of dung
Two boys sit in limpid shade of a scrub tree
The desert sand stretches out a dusty minefield
So much sand - what do they do?
The men have left for the city -
Women, children and the old are left now.
We are the ghouls watching the poverty in this village of the hopeless
Locked away safe behind air-conditioned glass.
We will leave but they may never.
Dogs and goats scratch out a languid existence in the sand.
Yet they are happy.
***
Jain Temple:
An island of cool and calm
Birds fly around the temple making nests in the carved roof
Ganesh, the cobra and the priest watch over the proceedings as Jain waits locked behind grated doors.
A simple life, cotton sheets hanging by shaving mirror.
The sparrows pick up leaves and twigs from the floor then play across the temple, tag or swinging on wires.
The bell chimes as the old man chants hymns to the goddess enshrined in black marble.
The sparrows play on regardless.
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