The lady in question wore a proper, well designed sari. It didn’t stick out at the wrong places, and it barely ever needed readjustment, revealing only a calculated amount of flesh for the world around her to steal glimpses of. But of course they weren’t stolen, they were given away, as a form of charity. The sari sparkled and shined when the afternoon sun reflected off its sequined lining, flashing dancing spots of light onto people who would have the fortune of walking close enough to her. She was tall, with long straight hair that flowed like water, and she had what many would refer to as a ‘fair’ complexion, though one might argue that fairness had nothing to do with it. For all intents and purposes, her lush lips, seductive eyes, and geometrically appeasing facial structure gave her a certain incontestable beauty to aid her in her negotiations with the world.

Her face was contorted into a rather perturbed frown as she walked out of the air conditioned grocery store and into the sweat inducing heat of a Delhi spring day. With her nose held in the most respectable position for a woman of her stature, she walked without looking at the ground which served no greater purpose than to support her feet from below her. Worrying upmost about her quickly dampening clothes sticking to her body, she ignored the world around her, choosing instead to focus on the importance of her work assignment, and about how stupidly incompetent the hired help in her office had been as of late. As if they they weren’t even able to secure the Valentino collection, idiots, good help is impossible to find in this city.

As she approached her car, she pointed him to the back seat upon unlocking the door. She didn’t look at him from the moment he had begun following her. Her phone rang loudly from her designer purse, one she was guaranteed wasn’t a knock-off.  She answered.

He’d not said a word from the moment they had left the store. It was hot, but it was going to get hotter, and he knew that he should appreciate the fact that his place of work actually had AC to begin with. The grocery job wasn’t bad, there were worse things that he could be doing, or worst of all he could be doing nothing at all. Standing at 5’4, with a rather generic combover and pencil mustache, he never seemed to stick out much in a crowd. People wouldn’t look at him, nor would they bother him. Sometimes his boss, or some bitchy cashier would yell at him to work faster, but for the most part he was just invisible to the world in general. The salary wasn’t much, but it let him buy the necessities, which wasn’t much, either. That was life though, born into a role and forced to play it out until, well forever.

She had asked the cashier for a porter, and he had been assigned. He’d done this hundreds of times before, and he’d have to do it thousands of times more. He followed her out of the market, trying hard not to make eye contact or to be noticed. She could carry her own bags, he thought, but then, what would I do? The world seemed simple then in that moment, and as he walked behind her he thought about his friends, about what he had that he could be grateful for. It was all he could do, otherwise a flood of harsh thoughts would come flowing in, thoughts about ‘fairness’ and balance, of feeling invisible and of being no more than a shadow, or the fear of starvation, of doing anything necessary to survive…

The not-so-faired skinned man placed the bags in the back of the car and watched the lady enter the passenger seat. Her driver closed the door behind her, shot a glance to the bag carrier, and for a moment felt sorry for him. He’s nothing more than a paid slave, he thought as he shifted gears and drove off. Looking in the rear-view mirror at the store clerk, the driver thought about his job and how lucky he’d been to get it. This rich family paid him enough to send his kids to school, and employed his wife as a housekeeper and nanny for their children. They lived in a small attachment to what had been the biggest house he’d ever seen. Thank god I’m not that poor clerk… those guys, no concept of upward mobility. The beautiful woman continued speaking on her cellular phone and the driver continued to drive, unable to understand the English that she spoke. It sounds so ugly, that English… but then again, Madam makes Hindi sound ugly as well, so maybe English isn’t so bad. He made out the words theater and friend, but that’s all he could muster, otherwise she spoke too fast.

Their vehicle stopped at a red light, where the driver rolled down his window and called down to an adjacently parked auto rickshaw driver for directions. The rickshaw driver looked back and almost instinctively responded to go straight then left at the next light up ahead. Without thanking him, the driver rolled up his window so as to keep the AC in and the heavy traffic fumes out at the insistence of his patron.

The rickshaw maneuvered itself between a rather large SUV with tinted windows and a family sedan. Horns honked relentlessly around it, and it responded in kind. Vehicles, like people, use rather straightforward forms of communication, often without even offering much of a message, just like people. The light turned green and the rickshaw sped off into the cloud of dust and smoke that had been kicked up by the countless vehicles before it. The rickshaw passed a cyclist who thought he deserved as much of the road as anyone else, and he honked at it to get out of the way. A car sped up behind the rickshaw, it honked at the rickshaw, not once, not twice, but in a constant stream of honk, an uninterrupted sonata. The rickshaw got the message and moved out of the way so the car could speed by.

The rickshaw driver looked into his mirror at the passenger in the back of his tiny 3-wheeled cab, thinking about how smug this guy had been. He had spoken to him when negotiating the price, which, clearly, was in the favor of the passenger. Any attempt at conversation thereafter had been rejected with silence and a clueless look given to him by the passenger. These bastards, thought the driver, with their fair skin, their nice clothes, their sense of entitlement… if only they knew what it was like to inhale Delhi traffic smog and pollution and dust, day in, day out… he lit a small cigarette with one hand, then spat out the side of the rickshaw.

I bend over slightly and peer out of the open door, the world makes only as much sense as I can afford it to. Cows walking in the streets, children running up to me barefoot asking me for money at the red light intersection, giant trucks spitting dirt and black smoke into my face… I think about the driver and his attempt to talk to me, I wish I could speak to him, but my Hindi sucks, and I get nervous and stumble when I try to speak. I couldn’t even understand what he said, and I tried to explain to him that I couldn’t speak, but then gave up half-way. He wouldn’t have understood me anyways, I suck too much, and I haven’t made enough of an effort to improve. I make up excuses, like there are just too many other things to do, or, I’m surrounded by English speakers all the time and therefore the imperative isn’t there. I know my faults, but if I don’t at least pretend to defend myself for my many shortcomings as a human being, who will?

I see my time in this country slipping away, I see the return to another world as imminent, and it makes me feel as though I’m sitting in the audience at a very well-staged play. Everyone has a role, everyone has a stage name and a character to portray, everyone except for me. Though I would like to stand, make my way onto the stage, and give a long, dramatic monologue about the importance of being ernest in life, I know from experience that my plea will go unheard, and I will most likely be booed off stage. It’s happened before, and I learned an important lesson from it: as an outsider you must first know your audience before attempting to seduce them.

My destination arrives before me and I pay the rickshaw driver. I give him an extra ten rupees and pretend not to notice. I enter my usual cafe by the usual window where I always love to sit and spy on the passerby’s. I take out my laptop and enjoy a decent hot coffee. The world continues to turn around me as I sit here, more or less content to write about the scripted lives that will continue to play out until the end of time. My purpose, unknown and yet also undetermined, beckons me to act, to stand up and make my mark, but for now I will sit quietly, waiting patiently for the curtain to fall, and for the next act to begin.

Not my turn