Have I Mentioned?
When I first arrived at this building where I've been living I looked from the balcony and saw these wires. They were difficult to miss. But then I saw the tidy homes, the daily activities and the smiling people. From then on I looked through the wires and now have almost forgotten they are there.

And then there are the dumps. They are everywhere. Every morning the areas around the front doors are swept and tidied up. Then the trash is taken to the dump...which is across the street or a short distance down the road. In some places I've seen the trash piled up in small masses and burned, but mainly it lies along the road. I've never seen a garbage truck.

However I have seen men clean the trash from these ditches with a hoe type tool. They lift the reeking filth onto the side of the road. By the next day it is gone...taken to a dump, I assume, since I once saw a man unloading a pushcart at a roadside dump. The ditches can begin to stink after the sewage and trash sits in them in the sun for days.

Once in awhile I'm hit with the smell of baked urine. Urinating males are not uncommon so I'm not surprised by the smell. I pedalled past a school just letting out. Little boys were lined up along the ditch, backs to the road, relieving themselves. I've learned to look the other way when a man is standing with his back to the road. No need to see what he is doing.

There are bars across the windows I gaze from. I look out these windows and past the bars while I'm eating breakfast. Twice now I've seen a peacock on the neighbor's roof. Peacocks, the national bird, are wild here.

Through those windows I've noticed the air over Sivakasi is a bit hazy. The granite quarry on the right in the back is difficult to see most mornings. The locals complain of the chemicals used by the matches, fire crackers and fireworks industries. Plain dust is also in the air. Dirt side roads are common. There is little grass. It's dry. Dust is common.

Sivakasi is known as "little Japan" because of its industry and the industrious nature of the people. Unemployment is rare. Businesses are continually looking for workers. 100,000 people live in Sivakasi.... 200,000 work here. So, I'm told there are no beggars. I haven't seen many. Only a handful. They're in the town center, near the churches and temples.

Animals are everywhere. They wonder the streets and the dumps. Dogs are common, cats less so. Cows no longer are a surprise. Neither are goats. And there's a wild looking black pig/boar that appears to be harmless. Chickens and roosters abound. There are some that roost in the tree at the corner of the balcony....near that electric pole.

I may not have mentioned these things before. They do quickly become a part of life here and so fade into the background of all that vies for one's attention.

**And this also......

Slumdog Millionaire took the Oscars. There was clapping and boasting at school today. None of the teachers have seen the film. Two of about 35 in a class of 8th graders had seen it. It has not made the theater here. Several months back The Hindu, the daily English newspaper, discouraged viewing it. There have been some letters to the paper criticizing the view the movie gives of India. But today the teachers were saying the slums in the big cities are real. Slums are a part of India. There have been letters to the paper to that effect also. Today the paper and people were proud of the awards Slumdog Millionaire won. The composer A.R. Rahman is a local boy... he's from Tamil Nadu.