The window of our hotel room in Lachsman Jula faces North. We look out through screen and criss-crossed ironwork onto a small balcony with more criss-crossed ironwork. Every day around the same time, a boy bangs our windows closed so that he can get by. He pours water along the balcony and sweeps it away with the dirt that has collected. Always there is the same amount of dirt. We open the windows again later.
Beyond the balcony there is a cement wall. Moss grows on it in streaks of frozen rain. The bottom is dark with damp seeping up.
There are buildings in the distance rising against a grey sky. A sign for the Jaipur Inn. A sign for Western Union. There is laundry strung up between a tree and a window ledge.
In this place everything slants toward the river. From the window that means that the land runs down to the left, or Westward. Flat surfaces are mostly man made: our own floor; the cement steps beyond the green-streaked wall; the street below.
