Sounds of this place.

I am listening to crickets or tree frogs, or both, the whirling fan overhead, night bird calls and the occasional splash as someone steps into the river outside for their evening bath.

This place has a rhythm which I am coming to recognize through sound, patterns of sound, and especially water sounds. The first noise though, and noise it is, for the speakers are scratchy, is the temple music which starts shortly after 5 am. As the light comes up, so do the songs of the day birds. The one I most recognize is the kingfisher, who is really quite raucous in the coconut palms over the water. Next I hear the scraping of footsteps on gravel, as the ayurvedic therapist arrives with my first morning dose of the day's herbal concoctions. At about the same time, men's voices waft in through the window, along with the sound of splashing that accompanies their washing under the foot bridge, before heading off to work. Boy's voices soon follow, the splashing intensifies as some one or two of them slap a few pre-school front crawl strokes to wash off the soap that they have lathered all over body parts exposed and on body parts under their innerwear. Quite amazing how they do it, really.

Women come next, with their laundry. Thwack, thwack as they hit it against the stone steps. Large vehicular traffic can now be heard in the distance. Bicycles and motorcycles move across the bridge in both directions. Pedestrians call down to those below at the water.

Each day, a man or a woman comes, with two cows and a calf. The animals are pushed in to the slow moving water for their daily swim and bath. As the calf gets ducked, he lows for his mother.

Throughout the day, the voices are constant, the bridge is a connector, thus steadily used. Unless it's raining, the drumming sound of which drowns out everything else.

Come evening, the sounds again become water based. At dusk, this day, I have witnessed two women undress in the water, yet remain fully covered, wash themselves, like the boys, everywhere covered and uncovered, wash their hair, wash the clothes they arrived in, including their bras, thwack, thwack thwack to remove the excess moisture, then gracefully get redressed in the now clean, albeit, wet, clothes. All this while maintaining absolute decorum, for they are full on in the public eye. I can't help but watch for it is fascinating.

After the women, at day's end, darkness falling, are men again, washing away the dust of day's labor and toil. The crickets strike up, the night birds call, a backup band to the river's cleansing song.