Culture and Waterscapes

Culture:

And on Thursday the haberdasher appeared with a cardboard trunk on his head. There was no point in his coming to our house — he sold only to women and the only woman in our house was \Mcy-amma who never even looked at what he had to offer.

She had seen monkey-suits give way to Nehru shirts; Sheffield silver replaced by coconut spoons. But her cooking and her wood-stove—two black stones outside the kitchen—remained timeless.

Waterscapes:

"....but when I looked up again I would glimpse the sea between the trees bathed in a mulled gold light. The colour of it, the roar of it, was overwhelming. It was like living inside a conch: the endless pounding. Numinous. You couldn't get away from it."

Out beyond the reef, shoals of fish turned in a dazzle. Mister Salgado held Nili's hand while the sea-foam swirling below rubbed out their footprints as they walked along the sand.

In the morning, at first light, the sea lay like a Madras pancake. Thosai flat. Tranquil.

The wet sand hugged my bare foot at every step, sucking at the sole; the surf burbled under the surface and small crabs raced into their sand holes.

He let go of me and stared at the ocean turning itself inside out, a deep blue gathering to swallow the sun.