Senses

I'm reading a book right now called, Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. I bought it a couple of days ago at a book stand on the streets in Pune for like two dollars. It is incredible. In the first chapter Roberts talks about the smells of India, and the way he describes is perfect.. and I want everyone to read it.. so here we go...

"The first thing I noticed about Bombay, on that first day, was the smell of the different air. I could smell it before I saw or heard anything of India, even as I walked along the umbilical corridor that connected the plane to the airport. I was excited and delighted by it, in that first Bombay minute, but I didn’t and couldn’t recognize it. I know now that it’s the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it’s the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It’s the smell of gods, demons, empires, and civilizations in resurrection and decay. It’s the blue skin-smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the Island City, and the blood-metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and loves that produce our courage. It smells of ten thousand restaurants, five thousand temples, shrines, churches, and mosques, and of a hundred bazaars devoted exclusively to perfumes, spices, incense and freshly cut flowers.

Whenever I return to Bombay, now it's my first sense of the city- that smell, above all things- welcomes me and tells me I’ve come home."

Playtime in the afternoons at House of Hope.. Soon after this picture was taken the swing did indeed break.
More of the festival..

Rooftop of the Girls' Intern Flat

Sahara