Kathmandu, Nepal 2003

The sun drenchs and heat soaks the air. It throbbs with fumes. The drivers of the three wheeled, canvas covered taxi’s curse, beep, and press their way between motor cycles with garishly clad riders. Males in western-style helmets drive women, dressed in peacock-colored saris, down the main boulevards between the Mercedes of diplomats and the Range rovers of the wealthy Western usurpers. Upon the cracked concrete edged sidewalks lined in a herringbone pattern of bricks walk bird venders, whose baskets of finches, parrots, and macaws tweet wildly. The baskets upon their shoulders swing. The noxious fumes of the traffic apparently insufficient to quell the beating of their small hearts. Shop keepers hawk fly covered, freshly butchered chickens from dirty white porcelain surfaces; as tomorrows dinner pecks seeds through the floors of their wire cages. Through and amongst the plethora of colors and noise military and police in mundane blue with rifles mounted on the rear of their vehicles pass by. Ordinary citizens hack up spittle from raw throats and congested lungs while horns blare continuously; blending with the barks of hundreds of stray dogs.