By Shreshtha Kovvali
On the road that leads to Balwant Chowk,
are pink marks that have seeped deep into tar,
gulab from last year’s Holi,
or the year before that or the year before that,
despite the traffic and foot traffic and gutka and dust,
sprinkled oddly and without discernible figure
on a flat grey rectangle, with white stripes
although the road is one-way.
There despite the water with which
a boy rubbed gulab on his mother’s face,
once out of habit, the second time
so that she placed her palms
on his cheeks and laughed, without seeing which
a ten-foot-long plasticine garden hose
that was kissing a communal tap,
bathed Balwant Chowk in cold water,
warm by afternoon,
after which a thick coconut-leaf broom held by electrical tape,
shaved against the grain of the asphalt,
but could do nothing to affect the gulab,
that I stepped over last week.