January 23,2014; Mumbai word picture

The street is filled with yellow and black taxis,

Most with roof racks and horns beeping.

Red city buses honk and brake.

The odd one is a double decker.

An ad on the side of one bus promises:

"Change your life,

Take a two day life-skill education course!"

Crowds spew off.

People on the street race for the door.

Some make it, before the bus accelerates.

The tour buses in the street

Are big and new.

They stop completely before

Passengers debark.

From the first amble men

Wearing orange scarves and name tags.

The second unloads a symphony of colour;

Women in flowing saris,

Veridian, turquoise, magenta, gold.

Motorcycles swerve and veer

To avoid the cars, the colourful delivery trucks and the buses,

While ancient skinny men, dressed all in white,

Calmly peddle bicycles laden with packages of paper,

Bundles of iron pipe

Or stacks of eggs.

Along side and amid are the pedestrians.

Some limp and hobble like me.

Others strut and stride.

One, with a white cane, taps his way.

The spun sugar man carries a tall pole hung with

Ribbons of pink and yellow candy.

There is man with a long white beard wearing a turban.

His big brown chest is bare.

His legs and waist

Are wrapped in a long wide strip of cotton.

Another man in a tan suit

Carries a enormous box on top of his head.

The mayhem, that is Mumbai,

Almost obliterates the lush tree foliage overhead

And the large black birds that swoop and scream,

While smog mutes the view across the traffic cycle

Of an ornate palace-like police head quarters.

In front of me, waits an ample amber woman

With ear buds and a pony tail.

Rolls of flesh spill over the waist back of her lime green sari.

Next to me a man sings.

Oblivious to it all,

A man in a tan government uniform and ball cap

Cleans the street, curb, and side walk

With his big twig broom.

Behind him, another worker,

Wearing her fluorescent orange vest like a bustle,

Pushes a large cart,

And picks up all the sweepings.