Home: Southeast:
Kaziranga
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,/
Every poem an epitaph. And any action/
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat/
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
T S Eliot, Little Gidding
April 2008
A bridge creaks in the evening, children splash in the stream, a puppy runs along the path, and fireflies glow, suspended over fields receding into the horizon.
Cloaked in an ever-present northeastern twilight, sprinkled with rain, padded down with layer upon layer of vegetation, trampled over by rhinos more bovine than aggressive, a land of red temples and jungle goddesses, of lizards that bark at night on British-era walls of tea estates, bamboo fences around backyards, bamboo bridges over streams, entire slopes of undergrowth spilling over with ferns, houses of heavy furniture and high ceilings and dim, cool interiors, books and the ever-present comforting whiff of mustard oil, ironed clothes and joha rice.