There's a bus stop down the street and around the corner. It's in front of the kidney center, which is surrounded by a moat of raw sewage. I wait there about once a week for the bus to the main bus stand, holding my breath and hoping to see the number five speed into view.
Last week when I stepped out onto the main street, I saw confetti in the road. There's no sidewalk, just a paved road for the cars and a smelly, dusty shoulder for anyone unfortunate enough to be walking. And that day, the road was covered with bright pinky-red and white confetti. No, the red was rose petals. I peered down at my feet as I trotted along. The white bits were long and thin, and for a moment I thought they might be jasmine petals. But they were puffed rice. I looked up. The street was still covered with rose petals and puffed rice, and a few whole roses lay in the road as well. I pictured a wedding car strewing flowers and rice as it passed. It didn't seem likely, though. Weddings are so common, and I've never seen such a thing before.
I remembered seeing a funeral procession long ago, my first year in India. The man pushing the wheeled bier kept reaching up to the garlands that hung just above his forehead to pull off a few petals and drop them along his path. But those were marigolds. Today's carpet of flowers was not for a funeral.
As I turned the corner, I smelled roses over the ordinary myriad of odors. Perhaps they had poured out rose water as well. How else could the fragrance of roses compete with reek of an open drain? But the road was strewn with petals far as the eye could see. I remembered the Ganesh temple down the way just out of sight, and imagined an open cart with a silver statue of the god inside. Perhaps it had moved slowly up the street as priests and devotees showered the god with roses and rice.
Who knew? Probably everyone else in town, but not I. I was just grateful as I waited for the bus and smelled the flowers.
