A hot evening here...

Tonight was very hard... is very hard... I am awake, as is half the neighborhood. Pukku--the two-year old little girl next door--is awake and actively asking questions. It is 11 pm. This girl sits at the window and waits for fruits and vegetables vendors to ask: "O Bhaiyya! Kasari ho? 40-50 ma milayera dinus na! O Bhaiyya! Kasari ho?" There is one man in particular, in his 50s, who grins at her and asks her to ask him again. The girl is barely 2 years old! But she sits at the window asking: "How much is it? Why don't you sell it for 40 rupees?"

It is so hot that she can't fall asleep. She is asking questions to her parents in her clear, loud voice, and I can hear it.

Two owls, beautiful birds, elusive during the day but active in the night, have taken up their back-and forth calling, loud and unfriendly screeches. One of them often makes the open window-pane by my pillow its perch from where to wait for sewage rats to emerge. Sometimes I hear if swoosh down to the ground. There follows a piercing squeak, a crunch of bones, and a telling silence: dinner, death. Death, dinner.

It is so hot, the owls can't keep their vigilante perch in peace.

The neck sweats more than any other part of the body, and that is a disturbing, sickly sensation: it is the feeling of blood trying to desperately cool down. I moved in the bed to find the water bottle and settling back, almost jumped up in surprise: the outline of heat I'd left on the bed was a pool of fire, an unwelcome surprise.

There is a cloud cover over Kathmandu. Instead of bringing rain, it is just increasing the steamy discomfort.