Sound, Smell, Sight

July 31, 2008: I seem to be on a fortnight schedule for updating my blog (that’s a word I’ve heard a lot recently). I’ve followed through with about half of the senses: sound, smell, and sight. Here is a summary.

SOUND: I’ve talked before about the beeping. Half of what I did while noting sounds was to track the number of beeps/honks/bleeps/toots that I heard. It made it difficult to focus and be thorough, because…there were 259 honks! I considered counting the ones that lasted for more than 3 seconds as more than one honk, but concluded that was too complicated. Among those honks, here is what else we generally hear on our way to work.

• Rattle
• The sound of high gear
• Acceleration (Passing)
• Man asking rickshaw driver for help with directions
• “Yo!”
• Swish (puddle)
• Squeak
• Asking for directions again (I wish I could describe the gestures)
• Engines turning on in syncopated unison (the sound you hear in the car deck of a ferry when cars are all turning on their engines)
• Radio playing Hindi music
• My auto rickshaw turning off, and other noises becoming more noticeable
• Whistle
• Vroom (there’s no other way to describe it…a motorcycle revving the engine right next to the rickshaw)
• Spit
• Yawn
• Blinker of my auto (sound similar to when the back of a school bus is open…more of an alarm)

SMELL: I spent a lot of this leg of the journey with my eyes closed, taking in deep, intentional breaths almost the entire way. It was enjoyable to focus so much on this sense, even though it was in an urban area and had the correlating smells.

• Cow dung
• Exhaust
• Dog dung
• Trees – cool (I think you can smell ‘cool’ when it’s really hot)
• Dump
• Warm (likewise, the heat had a specific smell)
• Sweat
• Hot body
• Bus exhaust (distinct from others)
• Trash (mild smell)
• Diesel (from trucks)
• Sweaty Body/Head (at a light again; again noticed the smell before looking up to see what was around me).
• Car/Hood (sitting in traffic next to a new-ish car; the heat from the hood was recognizable to times I’ve stood next to cars in the US)
• Wet meadow smell (we were on a busy road, but going slow in traffic; there is a ditch of water right next to the road, and vines that grow up the brick/concrete walls; it had recently rained)
• Mud
• Ferry exhaust
• Trash
• Burning corn
• Gas station smell (we were not near a gas station)
• Onion
• Exhaust
• Dust

SIGHT: I had to do this exercise twice. The first time I started looking all around, but decided to look just to the left. On the return route, I looked to the left again (thus the opposite side). It felt like I could do this 4 more times and still only capture a small percentage of what we see.

(From work to home)

• Cars (parked against the sidewalk; driving)
• Park (fence; trees; path; dark)
• Shops (bank; salon; Coffee Day; bank; dry cleaner; bank)
• Corn (people grilling and selling corn; people are set up everywhere doing this… grilling pieces of corn one at a time; mostly women and children; apparently it’s dipped in lemon and re-grilled)
• Ice Cream (mobile freezers with umbrellas)
• Flowers (flower stand; gorgeous, beautifully arranged flowers)
• Dogs
• Recreation Center (Similar to a YMCA; government run/subsidized; tennis; gym; yoga; a sign that says India vs. Sweden, Football)
• People walking home (many)
• Driver spitting (People chew betel nuts, which is a digestive and stimulates a secretion that turns red and needs to be spit out)
• Crow
• Clothes on the road median (I’ve seen this a number of times; near the train station, 30+ uniforms were hung up on the surround medians)
• Water spouting, man showering (From a pipe, right on the edge of the woods)
• Unattended bike-rickshaw with cardboard being transported
• Incense smoke coming from my auto rickshaw’s dashboard
• Back door of auto rickshaw in front of us held on by string
• Traffic Cop (Blue pants and blue beret)
• Man picking his nose (apologies to the couth among you)
• Child trying to sell me a magazine (entreating words in Hindi; “Bye”!)
• Cars (many!) Man. Bike.
• Rickshaw driver cleaning the inside of the rickshaw with a rag; shaking the dirt from the rag outside the rickshaw
• 5 other boys/children selling various goods
• Busses (Driver side open – no door). Words written in English: CNG. Stagecoach. Words written in Hindi.
• Ditch. Water. Man with Turban. Brick Wall. Pink Flowers. Wonderful smell! (where was this yesterday?!)
• Construction and construction sign “Work in Progress”
• Puddle
• Man peeing on the side of the road
• A beggar with no hand
• Bus stop. Majority of people on cell phones
• Corn being roasted
• Man sweeping dirt from the road
• Outdoor fast-food markets (momo’s, juice, samosas)
• Vegetable stand
• Bike rickshaws with flat wooden beds for transporting good
• Park (kids playing ball game)
• Adorable 6-yr old in a kurta (traditional Indian clothes)
• JNU: Beautiful pink flowers all along the wall for about a quarter mile
• Cow
• 3 Donkeys
• 2 dogs lying in the street
• Girl roasting corn
• People waiting for bus
• Car stopped on the side of the road (3)
• Motorcycle stopped on the side of the road (2)
• Dirt/weeds in piles
• Man collecting piles of dirt?
• Bike with jugs (Milk? Gasoline?)
• Sign: “Welcome to Sector – C. Save Water.”
• Gates, Security Guards
• Huge speed bumps.

(From home to work)

• Men hanging out in cars (car doors open, front seats reclined; sitting on hoods. This was outside a school. It’s likely that these could be personal drivers for some of the children. Drivers wait for people for hours at a time. Some people at work have drivers who wait around all day until after work. Having a driver is not very expensive and doesn't have the same meaning as it would in the US)
• Food Stand
• Beds (There are a lot of beds made of woven strips of strong cloth; they are on the sidewalk/slightly back from the sides of the road, in the makeshift tents, in the shade; a lot of older men lay on them during the day, especially during the hottest hours)
  CNG line at gas station (As far as I can tell, all of the autos and most of the public busses run on CNG. There is a gas station close to our house that often has lines reaching 12-20 busses back)
• Mall (There is a mall being built on Nelson Mandela road, also very close to our house. It is slated to be a very posh mall with stores such as Dior and Louis Vitton; On any given day, beginning at sunrise, women and men are carrying bricks, gravel and other material on their heads; there are several security guards that set up a small piece of shade with a stick and piece of cloth to stay protected from the sun; to the right of the mall there is a community of shacks – likely the people and some of their families who are buiding the mall, many of whom are likely migrants; to the right of the shacks is a field with relatively high grass which the community uses as a latrine – there are often 1-5 people there at any one time, especially in the mornings on the way to work)
• Jungle (Further along Nelson Mandela road there are thick brushes of trees on the left hand side)
• Community on the circle (There is a community of shacks on a traffic circle at one of the crossroads: there are often kids running around, small shops selling single-packet goods such as gum or shampoo, women cooking in metal pots with kids peering at the food, 2 pigs, bike rickshaws with wooden flatbed for transportation – I think this is the originating point for a number of the mobile fruit stands and lime-juice stands)
• Men crouching on side of road (talking, watching the road)
• Egg man (a man with a tower of eggs on the back of his bike)
• People walking along side of road
• National Association of the Blind (I never noticed this was here before)
• Bike riding in the opposite direction (toward us)
• Tire Repair Area (An area beyond the sidewalk, under a few trees; there are tires of all shapes laying around, un-inflated)
• Donkey pulling cart
• Sweeping the sidewalk and road (there are many men sweeping)
• Barber (barber shops are set up all along the roads; a mirror is hung from a fence, a tarp is strung up to create shade, and that is the shop; some shops have wooden structures that are closed up each night)
• Beds (as described before; one or two on every block)
• Dump (There are communities of people who live on many of the blocks, including the busiest roads; Some of the communities sell different wares; Most mornings and evenings you can see every day life going on – people bathing, washing clothes, cooking, hanging or folding laundry, etc; One of the communities lives in very close proximity to a dump)