A banjaran sits in one corner of the bazar with her three children. Her head half covered with her pallu, she darts looks at everyone who passes by her. Asking for money, food from the nearby stalls, anything would do for her. She wants to stuff herself and then her three children up.
A ghagra with a wide wide circumference sits on her taut waist.. her naval visible, right above which is the choli that half covers her breasts.. the hooks undone, her half open breasts can feel the air gusts of wind blowing along with dust hanging.
A plastic cover floats in the air, bemusing her elder son.
He giggles, his yellow teeth flashing in the yellow tungsten street lamp that hangs above them.. mud, dirt and a runny nose has bleached his face into the colour of earth. Raw. He giggles.
The woman's gaze, meanwhile shifts from her scrawny little daughter to me. She gestures her right hand, shapes all the fingers together as if holding an imaginary morsel of food and mouths nothings, looking at me all the same.
I look at her, affected. Her big empty eyes addressing the hollow in me, I feel pricked.
I turn to the kulfi wala immediately and ask him for another kulfi. He draws one out of the saancha and I ask him to hand it over the middle son of the woman who had by then paced over to the kulfi stall.
Satiated he looks at the kulfi and starts chomping pieces off it from the tip. He walks over to where his mother and two siblings camp. The woman takes a bite off the kulfi and asks him to share the rest with his younger brother and sister. He playfully refuses but seeing the half-crying infant of a sister, he carefully helps her take a bite.
The woman is looking up and above by now, her gaze finally resigned, resting at the skies. The dust storm is building up. Her half exposed breasts still, attracting the mud particles.
Two teenage girls walk past. One of them wears a dress that exposes her clean-shaved fair skinned legs and the other wearing one-span denim shorts.
A couple of boys cram their necks taking a good surefire look at the pairs of legs. By the time I manage to scurry my unsettled eyes back at the woman, she has gathered her children.
The infant rests on her long waist as she holds the middle son tightly by his wrist.. the elder son stomps forward, clearing the fog of dust particles from his eyes. As she strides forward, her breasts moves, the left nipple almost peeking out.