A wide, muddy stretch of the River Ganga cuts through the town, and from each side, docks extend like wooden fingers into the soupy water. A simple, roped punt is hunched on the shore and a man is asleep on its beams in the warm sun.
On this side, a bar oozes drunken fishermen out onto the street along with strains of raucous music. Many of them slump over to long, elegant boats tied off and floating on the brown tide.
On the other side, seekers in a red stone monastery wade into the water to soak in the wisdom that flows down from sacred springs in the distant mountains.
The future came to this place with the Gallente, years ago, but this town clings to the old ways, just as the warm wet air clings to the flesh of the people who live here.
Then comes the rains, sweeping down from the looming Himavant, and the town is shrouded. The rain lasts for three months of the year and soaks the palms of the plantation, pooling on the already sodden ground. Dark, moaning winds lash the houses, tearing aside the roofs of dried palm leaves. Each house, built of wooden beams strung together with mosquito netting and surrounded by a great wall of sharpened stakes, becomes a frightful place, smelling of rain and rot, of sickness and sweat. The locals argue often, confined to their tiny houses, and their yells are punctuated by the cries of the ill.
In the monastery, the circling winds create a sonorous effect, like a constant mantra echoing in open, stony spaces, and those within huddle in their wide halls to consider the infinite.
The rains ease to a light drizzle for several days before the downpour resumes, and during this time everyone returns to work, tending the damaged plants in the fields and repairing the houses, like a pack of busy ants.
This is the time of the predator, especially the vicious Rkshas, the brown coat, the destroyer, who comes after the rains, having hungrily waited in dim silence for the rains to end. Many is the farmer, having emerged to repair the broken stockade around their swampy home, who has found themselves to be that long-awaited meal.
