By Kulpreet Yadav

Delhi can be frustrating when you are waiting for the weather to make a switch. It just hangs in there, kind of bored, the sky morose, the dust unrelenting to make room for the weather-in-waiting to come in. Then there are the preying mosquitoes, the prowling dogs on the street, homeless children sleeping under bridges…. So, like at this very moment, if the winter is unable to penetrate the city, it is for the good I guess. It's 2011 and the thought stays the same, like it has always been, like it will always be.

My walk to the market, a few days ago, as it turned out, remained as safe as ever. The dog which barked at me for some reason I couldn't fathom (I am not too fat, mind you!) stayed a few feet behind me. His interest got a few others, who competed alongside, barking musically, until, when I remained calm, my head straight ahead at the approaching market, I sensed them blotting away, one by one.

I love the market in the evenings. Like now. It's six. The street lights add translucency to the market, mixing with the milky lights emanating from the shops. The meat seller has a big moustache and like always I give him a slip. He seems cruel, which he must be, because of all the dead meat he has to chop, to sell. The Chinese snack shop has a man at the counter, so fat, so black and so hairy that he is perhaps opposite to everything Chinese. Including, he smiles too much and is keen to listen. He likes my buying soup, and I, like always, narrate him my day-long story.

But, five minutes later, the bookseller, with his small walls of the second hand books arranged on the pavement, right at the spot where the cars and the scooters stop at the traffic signal, their exhaust fumes keeping their spines warm, stares at me plainly. I ask him a few questions, which he doesn't answer. But this is nothing new, and in fact I have been expecting it. His lips are pink as always due to the betel-nut which he fondly chews and its deposits along with his saliva I can see in the long, vertical pink patches on the wall next to him. It's like as if the white wall has been crying pink tears all along. Like always, he refuses to acknowledge my presence, ignoring my questions. I decide on a worn out copy of a James Hedley Chase novel, a pistol on its cover page. It's a clandestine thought but I wonder if there can be a way I could make the pistol come alive and shoot the meat seller and this rude, irritating bookseller dead.

About a year ago, there was a garbage bin placed on the edge of the market. The event found mention in the local newspaper too, I remember. Now I am next to that famous spot. It remains famous, but only with cows, dogs, flies and mosquitoes. One of the dog pauses from his exercise of running his nose through the garbage and stares at me, hard. I saunter towards the Indian food stall, where I know would be the girl I come here to see every day.

She indeed is. I smile, but only when she is looking away. I order my everyday snack I loathe so much, park myself closest to her, about two feet, and try eating without making noise. I pretend to like what I am doing and succeed, I think. But since she is already halfway through her eating she finishes in not time. I must speak with her today, so I try, my mouth full of food. She is staring at me now. Her eyes are smaller than I thought they were. Then the words come out of her mouth, "What do you want?" Her mouth is meaner, I notice. I want to go away; I suddenly realize I don't like her; the past four months have been a waste. But she won't go before I answer the question, and I do.

Speaking the truth can cost so much, I am about to realize. The shopkeepers and the shoppers abuse me and hit me. The Chinese snack guy is the mildest with his punches, but the meat seller and the book seller are the most villainous. They beat me black and blue. The bookseller, when others have gone and lost interest, snatches the book with the pistol on its cover, that pistol I would use some day to kill the bastard, and goes away.

When I limp home an hour later, the dogs don't bark. They just walk silently next to me; perhaps they want to express solidarity with me, perhaps they are aware what my tribe has done to me.

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