Turtle well in Aarey milk colony, Mumbai

A centuries old well, which is the only source of water for 60,000 people, who live in this half-village-half slum in the Neem and Banyan tree forested valley in the city. Children scream and play at the well and reel up buckets, sound of plunging buckets and sounds of water splashing, sinking, bubbling, rippling- sounds echoing and bouncing up the purplemoss carpeted stone walls of the well. The water is dirty and is the source of all the water borne diseases in the colony, the doctor from the primary health clinic tells us. But it is the only source, so nothing can be done except for the children and women to carry buckets of it back to their shacks. Black Telapia fish swim near the sunlit surface of the well. Two giant turtles live at the bottom of the well and seldom come up for air- how they got there nobody knows. A baby turtle swims up to the surface of the well and paddles around for a while, delighting all the children and making their mothers smile. Just another morning of collecting water for the residents of Aarey milk colony. From the well you can see tree-scapes and some blunted hillocks and ridges and the faraway high-rise buildings of shining-India like on a different planet and the more threatening high rise buildings, being built near the settlement. Building developers eyeing the slum-village, the 10,000 shacks, the moss covered, ancient well, where the children come to work and play and the Telapia fishes swim and the turtles come up for air. The building developers are eyeing them all and licking their lips

for the better half of the sky

She sang every song as if

It was her last

She kept catching city crow shit

In her sea weed hair

She stole more books

Than she could keep still long enough to read

She kissed like a parrot and mauled like a tigress

And left me bruised and bleeding and marked as her territory

She loved dogs more than people and she loved me

More than most dogs

She painted all night when possessed

And chucked wet paintings at me at dawn

She played with fire, put out matches and candles with her fingertips

And was terrified of sex

She walked with me, talked with me, cried with me, laughed,

Kicked my shin, pulled my hair, threw hot tea once before smashing the clay cup, bathed my

Forehead with soaked rags till she had washed away my fever and she

Kissed me antibodies

She found me, made me, made me want to live forever and die

While I held her sleeping and then

Just when she and I were slipping into an unhappily ever after

She suddenly realised that I had

Lost her.