Srinagar, India 1979
The heat was intense, my sleep fitful. The sounds of the night foreign. The sky black as a widow, deep, dark, fraught. The constellations brilliant as Asscher cut diamonds. Even the palm fronds, gently wafting in the thick night breeze, offered little relief from damp suffocation of my sleeping bag. The incessant annoyance of gnats about my face and abuzz in my ears.
As the sun was slowly born again, waves of heat fractured the air like sensuously undulating, then a gradually evaporating mirage. From my left periphery, a caravan came into view. A chorus line of bare-backed camels slowly clomp, clomping along in no rush to get to the bazaar.
In the feverishly dense air and searing light, images began to form in my mind’s eye – transparent, striated and colorful. A bevy of black-haired young women swathed in a kaleidoscope of silken saris, silver and gold threads sparkling in the morning sun and floating in the gentle wind, waving upward on the rising heat. Baskets of fragrant mangoes, crisp, green cabbages, saffron-hued persimmons and juicy melons balanced perfectly atop their level-postured heads, chatting and laughing, bare toes bejeweled with delicate, silver rings.
The sight of this cluster of graceful Sudra women, made an impact. I found their toe rings enchanting and determined that my lower digits would no longer trod this earth bereft of ornamentation.