Russell Market

What I want most is what I deeply fear: loss of self; yet here I stand, a “memsahib,” all decked out in wonder, and still a stranger amid the harvest, old gaffar at my side. Here’s a pandit preaching in the flower stall: he turns funeral wreaths into wheels of rapture. I must shrug off my notion of knowing anything of substance about the world, about the spirit. Sparrows dart between the columns like music. Huge pupae, bananas split their golden skins; flies moisten their hands in bands of dew. Lepers limp by on crutches, in slow motion. Where is there order in the world? None, none, I think—no order, only spirals of power. The pyramids of onion, guava, melon—all defy my reason: they shine like galaxy-driven planets. A balancing scale becomes a barge of plenty, a cornucopia endlessly filling up and emptying. The wages of sin are more sin: virtue’s wages, more virtue—and all such earnings, weightless. I’ve forgotten my errand; I float now through myself like a howl through a phantom mouth— the world’s an illusory marketplace where I must bargain hardest for what I hope I’m worth.