by Luke Ritta
Chaotic, crazy, lonesome, packed like sardines in a can. Old Delhi,
New Delhi or just Delhi, a city where life is just life.
Why O why do humans live like ants, where blotted cows are the country’s mothers and
a man named Ghandi is its father. Who knows about this land apart from
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
The Taj Mahal! Milky white and smooth as Italian marble while flashes from digital
cameras sparkle like the opening of the Cannes film festival.
Agra! Cow of all sizes sleep, stroll and wonder as they dodge traffic all sunny daylong.
The roads are like open zoos while I spot another animal and it’s got
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
The bodies burn like the slaves in Nero’s palace, children play on the streets with
excrement and pigs, dogs and cows petrol the alleyways in the warm murky air.
A spicy Indian lunch followed by a small chai and I ask the wildlife WHY? Temples
stand up straight like solders, monkeys live in one golden temple as it glows like the
inside of a volcano.
5 people in a speeding rickshaw, crazy music rings into the dusty streets, meanwhile
Vishnu stands in the dark eating a bag of peanuts.
Millions of grains of rice fall into my mouth as murky human ash falls into the Ganges at
sunset. Varanasi! How long will you live for? Only two items know the answer,
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
Green anywhere like you are living inside a jade ring. Fog so dense it ripples with
humans. Darjeeling tea! Drunk buy the truckloads taste better in its hometown, or dose
it? Beer + rum = Drunk while I walk around the foggy hills and I suddenly see the ghost
of Jack Kerouac, but it just turns out to be
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
Clouds poetically glide across the city; theses clouds are not from Mother Nature, O no,
there from the millions of cars that inhabited the dark hole of Calcutta.
Britons everywhere like they wish they were now colonising the terracotta buildings
that inhabit the dirty city.
The almighty British Empire that was once was, have they left or stayed? People by the
millions and millions walking like cows to the slaughterhouse. Why! Why do we keep on
having more and more humans?
We have to stop this madness or Just walk around Calcutta to find out what I mean.
O the melancholy nights with the stars that shine bright.
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
Turquoise sunsets with one hundred and one black crows. Dirty beaches old dead
coconuts shimmer in the Puri sunshine. Colonized hotel that look like they’re from the 30™s
and the 80™s stand erect. Decrepit beauty surrounds the this beach-side town, while at
night the dark beach has
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
The sound of an Indian train!!!!
Chai! Chai! Chai! Samosa! Samosa! Samosa! Dosa! Dosa! Dosa! Chai! Samosa! Dosa!
The odour of an Indian train!!!
Eye-watering smells of urine, the gut wrenching essence of human excrement while the
aroma of cows and wet grass glide into the old carriages.
I look out of the speeding train as see two things looking back at me, the street children
holding out their hands, asking for a new life and
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
They hold hands as they stroll next to the waves like characters from Marcel Proust’s
epic novel.
French families walk slowly in the moonlight of Pondicherry, while wealthy Indians
laugh and joke as the stuff their face full of nuts and berries.
The beef is served all over town. Merci France. At night bars play jazz music as the
wealthy socialise. Meanwhile the poor scavenge for food and talk to the animals that
scavenge with them.
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
God’s own country? Or the country of god? Kerala only know the answers to theses two
questions with its majestic backwaters and smelly fish markets.
The boats are full of small sliver fishes as the scales dazzle in the Kollam sunlight.
Houseboats sleep lazily on the still rivers like hippos relaxing in mud. But wait a
second, in the distance of this tranquil picture are
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
Alleppey to Kottayam on a riverboat. O! the wonder of South India.
I dreamily gaze at the scenery with my lonesome eyes. Children smiling and playing on
the banks, mothers washing clothes in the still water. Then the lucid visions of hanging
palm trees dissolving into their reflections in the river while in my mind the Doors song
“The End” plays again and again.
The images go hand in hand with the aroma of dead fish and the smell of sweaty men. O
the wonder of Mother Nature and man together at last.
The one and only true God (the Sun) burns down on the boat and river as it keeps
everything alive. Society should start worshiping the sun again, wouldn’t that be fun!
Seated next to me on the slow moving boat is a straggly dog. I then look into
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
Light rain drizzle all night long in the mountains of Kerrla.
Kumily! The small town surrounded by nature’s greatest gifts. The many tea plantations
blossom on the soft afternoon light, the heavy aroma of tea roasting engulfs the
surrounding area. O how decadent to drink a healthy cup of tea, thank you China and I
don’t say thank you to you a lot, that’s for sure.
Spice fields and gardens take up the rest of the area around Kumily.
Peppercorns hang like death row victims, red and green chillies don’t move just like
deadly scorpions. Cloves are brothers with allspice, cinnamon is a best friend with bay
leaves and green coffee beans hang in cluster like pearls around a 19th century Russian
princess’s neck.
I then look down into the dense tea fields for an hour or so. And I think that you, my
fellow reader, know what is looking back at me though the green leaves.
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
Hundreds of black crows hold conversation all day like they are in the senate. Also
ancient fishing nets wait all day for fish that don’t come. Just like today’s society where
all we do is suck are thumb.
The Portuguese, Dutch, and British have colonised Fort Cochi, that are now long gone
and a new mighty empire has taken control.
The Tourists! Nothing more to say about them. I then suddenly see a black and white goat
with a beatnik beard gazing into
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
The English language is heard echoing through out the lush valleys and peaceful hills.
Goa! The mighty empire of tourists have inhabited and taken over this land. Harsh
sunlight reflects of empty beer bottles, pink bodies burn like bacon in a frying pan.
Music is pounded out of bars like machine gun fire.
Old Goa in the right light wants to be like Renaissance Italy. I walk around from church
to church like I have left India and I am now somewhere in Europe, that’s until the smell
of wonderful aromatic street food feeds one’s senses.
Portuguese architecture and sweet stalls on every street corner. Panjim in the drizzle of
rain, like lost souls in purgatory.
Coconut distilled alcohol! One drink, two drink, three drink and murky visions
surrounded one’s head. Salut!
Fresh Fish die for our stomachs, spicy yellows soup, glasses of fake coffee and of course
more cheap beer than there are people in India.
Flea markets on the beach, palm trees making black shadows across the sand. Rugs,
shirts, dresses, jewellery, spices all up for sale while the heat of the Anjunna sunshine
bakes everything including the piles of cowpats.
Droplets of cold water drip off my forehead as I watch an old man make a drink out of
sugarcane. O! The sweet taste of the drink, like nectar from a mother’s n****e.
Seven cows relax on the dirty beach while thousands of humans act exactly like them.
Under the shade of a old decaying palm tree is a dirty old animal who licks its hurt paw
as tears fall from the
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
Modern clean streets, not as much traffic as other Indian cities, European look to the
buildings. Surely we are not talking about the city that was once called Bombay. The
gate of India at sunrise, Dosa stalls and chai pots steaming everywhere on the pavements
of modern Mumbai.
The city’s beach at sunset, boys holding hands, men holding hands, huge Indian family
strolling up the promenade like the British Raj once did. Wow! Look what 50 years can do.
Colossus’s slums surround the centre like crust on a pizza. The poor live there because
they are born there, there’s no alternative in the sad life of millions. That life and that’s that.
Poor families make use of what they have got and are mostly happy with their life and
loved ones. Maybe the western world should behave more like this. Maybe!
An old man with a Tolstoy beard lays on the street without a right leg, this once happy
child now has a cup next to him for begging for his life.
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
Cold, cold nights, the sky as dark as a poacher’s heart while stars twinkle on the night canvas.
Warm, warm days, pale blue sky with a few clouds scatter around like anti-aircraft fire.
Old dusty forts blaze in golden light.
The Place is Rajasthn.
A quaint still lake, a white place sits on top of the water like a snowflake. Udaipur! The
hills and tight streets lead to the lake, and yes the new empire has passed through this
town as well. Awful Restaurants as far as the eye can see.
Dusty, acrid landscapes. Old men with stunning moustaches chat to each other around
chai stalls. In the far distance is the huge fort of Jodhpur.
O, the old city! Old is the key word, images print into my eyes from thousands of years
gone by. Sacks of spices, a lonesome elephant walking around the side streets, saffron
lassis are drunk and sugary sweets are eaten by the inhabitants of this wonderful place.
This blue city with its blue wall and the older resident are starting to feel real blue as time
passes.
Bathed in golden light, Jaisalmer lives a quiet life. Eye watering smells and lucid visions
of the apocalypse surround me, O no! the fever has gone into me.
Fluids pour out of me as I gaze at the sandstone fort that looks over the town. 25 cups of
chai, 15 aspirin and one great Thali brings one back from the void.
Camels are everywhere, not live ones but the animals skin hangs on walls and are called
handbags to sell to tourists.
European tourists flood the roads looking like dirty tramps, all stoned out of their minds.
It has its famous festival but does Pushkar have anything more?
A great round lake surrounded by Ghats and men stroking their white moustaches.
I sit on a step of one of the Ghats in the harsh light of a naked light bulb; next to me an
old man with a stick is talking and praying to his many Gods. If I told him the truth about
religion, would it make him happy? If I told all of India the truth would it make them
happy?
Fireworks explode and fade way like human life over the pink city of Jaipur.
Huge painted elephants lazily walk around the narrow street like ogres from a
fantasyland. Japatis being made and cooked all day gives people something to do in their
otherwise pointless lives. Like all life on Earth, food is the key, nothing more or nothing
less.
An Indian wedding.! The makeup, the dresses, the wonderful food and music. Everyone
dances and drinks cardamom-flavoured coffee. While someone is watching the wedding
and it is
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
INDIA!
The green, white, and orange. The rich, poor, and dead.
Black thick moustaches, even thicker combed hair, stomachs like air balloons. Chew,
chew, chew then spit the red beetle leaf out onto the streets. Cow pat, empty chai cup, and
red spit that covers the canvas of India.
The aroma of freshly cooked garlic, ginger, and cumin frying in hot oil. The honking of
rickshaw 24/7, children asking for a rupee. Forts old and exciting, temples surrounded by
cows. Holy festivals and rituals take place every day.
And looking over the poor, the rich, the food, the groups of young men, the temples, the
rickshaws, the blotted cows, the stunning actresses of Bollywood, the chai, the rice, the
trains, and the 1 billion people are
THE SAD EYES OF A STREET DOG.
 |
Luke Ritta is 25 years of age and lives in London, England. He traveled around India in 2010 and rode the famous trains from New Delhi to the South of India and then back to the Capital in a circle. He has written two collections of short stories in the style of Jack London and John Steinbeck, and one novel set in the first World War. Also, he has made three black and white short films in the style of David Lynch and Wes Anderson, and recently finished editing his first feature film which he also wrote and directed. |
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