I wait to cross over to the marigold strewn gate of the brick shikhara, where stucco meditating Buddhas have looked down from their niches for over 1900 years. A teen clomps past me using his powerful forearms attached to wood blocks to drag his twisted body. He moves straight through the horn-blasting cars, busses, and zig zagging rickshaws, and his halo of space remains untouched. The pigeons and stray dogs go about their perfectly crafted business. A man with a switch emerges from shadows to thwack away a piebald cow grazing his pashmina display.

The street children race at me as I approach the gate. They fix on the cardboard box of cashew cookies packages. I yell to make a line so everyone can have some. They sit on haunches, noses crusted, clothes torn and filthy, each holding out one hand. They smile joyously as if the package were filled with wish-fulfilling jewels. When the box empties, they break rank and race off laughing. The elderly and emaciated, those with hunched backs, facial tumors, and glazed blue-eyed illnesses crowd around to grab at my shirt and pants. The heat is palpable, astonishingly thick like lake water. There is an angry shout as a tortured looking man races at me with a birdcage made from clipped twines of cyclone fencing. Within are three dazed birds with no place to perch and especially nervous to be trapped near one another. Junk birds — a sparrow, a pigeon, a myna. It all happened so fast.

 “Hazaar rupay de na!”

“Sir, he says, pay him 1000 rupees and he will release the birds.”

I cry out, “Let them go!”

“Hazaar.” He holds out a hand.

“Let them go first and I will hand you 200 rupees.”

He pushes his hand at me.

“Free the birds first.”

 He wrenches open a flap and shakes the cage and one by one the birds fly free. I hand him the bills and he sprints away.

“You see, he runs as it is illegal. And to catch more birds.”

“What was I to do?”

“The last Buddhist like you punched him in the face until he released the birds.”