Salt of the Earth

I started out this summer with the familiar god-it's-scorching trip until one afternoon. The house I share with a friend needed turning over so we wouldn't start a plague and the plants seemed resigned to their waterless fate. So it began, with the spoilt money plant, dripping the water carefully down the climber support in the middle. Seeping up and down the fibres until the plant seemed to shine in places. The plants drank hungrily, the dry earth exploded in little brown bubbles, sending a resentful mud-smell all over the place.
Then came the scrubbing and the floors seemed to give out a kind of marble-heat that I could almost feel creeping up. Where I leant, the skin seemed to stick to the wall, the back had to be peeled off. Where I bent, the sweat slithered in my knee joints, armpits, elbows, smoothing the edges of my movement. All this while my head swirled in the heat, caught in the monotonous action of hands and feet working across the floor.
Before I knew it, I was dripping in sweat. I could feel the shine of my back, the little rivulets running down my hips, the moist palm and instep, the glistening scalp and hair coming to knots and sticking to my nape. The sweat pouring down my face. The salt I could feel catching even my eyelashes.
I am a winter person but this was life teeming like my body was the primeval soup or something. It somehow reminded me of earthworms turning the moist, warm earth, their slippery dirty-red bodies moving like liquid caught in membranes. It reminded me of green leaves catching the sun on their faces, almost baking to a resolute dark green. It reminded me of the ivory-white roots of the drumstick tree that my grandmother dug up every now and then, giving off the smell of the earth and sun and decay.

Post-script: My day ended predictably, in office, in air-conditioning that brought gentle wafts of a hundred kinds of deodrant every now and then. Air-conditioning that sucked the moisture out and rendered a sanitised, cut-and-dried version. It was heaven, as a colleague put it. Antiseptic heaven, I suppose.

Very Nosey I am

Most thoughts of holiness desert me when I set foot near the Jama Masjid. Just when the flight to the sublime is encouraged by the pigeons casting fleeting shadows on the domes, a sword of a nose cuts me to pieces. Straight, a slope of about 25-30 degrees taking off from a forehead as huge and inviting as the masjid's courtyard. Not a pockmark, not a pinch, the nose is a monolith. The nostrils flare out, the veins in a filmy red glaring through membranously. I can almost hear them dilating when the Afghan-looking man makes eye-slits at me. What impertinence -- ogling at an elder like that.
Elder begone to the devil, the man had fiery red hair looking askance at the forehead and his face, a reflection of all the wild colours, was on fire. And while his eyes cringed, the kohl lines seemed to come together, ending in wrinkles that went to his ears on both sides. I usually swallow and make a quick even if disgraced exit at these times. But there's something about noses that makes me want to change the usual about Cleopatra's face that launched whatever number of ships. It must've been her nose, I'm sure. And although I haven't heard of a discipline to study noses, there's a wealth of information there. (Remember Salman Rushdie going on and on about Salim's cucumber-nose in Midnight's Children?)

Some humble submissions (I occasionally look at women as well, but mostly, it's men and their noses):
* Regal,sharp: Hopefully below a regal forehead (marked by a uniform stretch of flawless skin, temple to temple). These people are mostly proud, straight, sometimes temperamental but subject to a certain vanity of appearance, knowledge, something or the other.
* Hooked: The very sensuous devils. These are people of detail and seem to be constantly scrutinising something/someone. Sometimes malicious, given to gossip but very charming.
* Flat, capsicums: Very pleasant, easy-going. Since the noses can only make the faces cute or charming as opposed to striking, the mouth usually makes up, curling interesting as they speak or smile.
* Rounded: Snobbish, child-like. Sometimes the nose takes a life of its own, making the best of smiles ridiculous. Coupled with a pout, can be very difficult people.
* Huge noses, dilated nostrils: Now angry, now melting. Very excitable people who then announce their temper with breathing nostrils. Reminiscent of dragons!

(Field studies on, will keep adding to database)