5. 5. 2009

The water is so cold. I take a deep breath to fill my lungs with oxygen and pour a dipper of it over my head. And it is still cold.
The water in Vellore is hard. It coarsens my hair and requires superior species of soap to lather. Still, I persevere, rubbing my thin, transparent sliver of Pears Dry Skin over my thigh, rubbing in circles around my knee, and then balancing my leg against the rim of the bucket, my calves and feet.

There is black dirt in grimy cakes between my toes, underneath my toenails and cuticles, grey slime coating my heel. I walked barefoot through the hospital campus this evening. Plunging my naked feet into puddles and gutters along with crow shit and dog piss and everybody else’s shoes. I studied the contrast of my then white limbs against the night grey of the cement roads, turned my palms upwards to catch the light summer drizzle from the sky. I could smell the pungent boonh of wet pigeons and dogs, my own sweat dissolved in the rain, the traces of yesterday’s shampoo in my hair.

I scrub. And scrub. Finally, I use an old toothbrush and a discarded floss stick to wedge the muck out of the crevices in my feet, and them rinse them clean.
Pink and white again.
White hardened soles.