Danger

Because I have gotten used to pedestrians drifting aimlessly and carelessly into the street here, it took a few extra seconds of watching curiously as a little girl, *literally* only one or two years old, all by herself, tottered out into a busy two-way road in the twilight as I was on my way home this evening.

She crossed one lane slowly, on a diagonal, and then paused at the center, bicycles and motorcycles dodging her on both sides, looking around unhappily. And my first reaction was just to see it as some sort of cultural anomaly; sort of like "That would be totally insane in America, but here it's different and she must know what she's doing. Plus, nobody seems to be getting off their bikes to help her. This is probably totally normal." The whole "cosmic order" thing.

But, as a bus rumbled toward her, it suddenly dawned on me that this particular situation was universally insane, and I rushed out to grab her small hand and drag her amid protest to the side. Wearing a wide neon yellow dress, she was almost the exact size and shape of a traffic cone.

We hung out together for a moment at the side of the road, her hand wrapped around two of my fingers, before a woman, presumably her mother, appeared quickly from one side and picked the girl up into her sari, scolding her (I guess) for wandering off. I'm pretty sure the woman hadn't seen the street scene — and likely she thought it was weird that this white guy carrying a laptop was standing around holding her kid's hand — so we just sort of nodded at each other and they walked away. Puzzling.