Bangalore is a city under construction. It’s booming, and the booming is ugly.

Every place I look there are piles of cinder blocks, granite blocks, bricks and bags of cement mix. There are piles of rocks and piles of gravel and piles of dirt and piles of sand where the small rocks have been sifted out of the piles of dirt. There are stacks of iron reinforcing bars to go into the cement. There are piles of cement mixed and in use and piles of support beams to hold up the buildings which will go up at any given time.

There is a constant rhythm of hammers pounding things into place and pounding them out of place. Nothing is wasted. There are men in dirty little skirts squatting with rocks and hammers and chisels cutting through the reinforcement bars, one at a time. There are women with huge platters filled with rocks, bricks or dirt balanced on their heads- transporting it little by little to the required destinations.

Bangalore is dirty.

The pollution rate is twice that of any other city in India.

In Dallas the pollution hangs like sludge on the horizon lending brilliant colors to the sunsets. The pollution becomes a lens of beauty for 30 minutes everyday.

I haven’t seen the horizon since I’ve been here- there are too many buildings- and I haven’t made it out of Bangalore.

It’s time for a change.

I realized that I had reached my breaking point the other day when I discovered my “tan” was really just oil based pollution settled on my skin.

I got some lotion in a package. Naturally I proceeded to put the lotion on my poor old dried up toe. Then I realized I had a bug bite on my toe, so I scratched it, scratching some of the lotion off. I went to clean the lotion I had scratched off out from under my finger nail and saw- to my great horror- that it was dark brown! It was brown like fertile soil- soil I could have grown award winning zucchini in.

Well- that just my toe. Of course my toe has some dirt on it, I only ever wear sandals.

I looked at my “tanned” arm suspiciously . . . it never had looked right, but when I tried to scrub it off with soap and water it never came off.

I lotioned up my arms and scratched my tan off to reveal more fertile soil.

It seems the oils in the lotion caused the oils in the “tan” to loosen up.

I need to see the horizon.

I need to get out of the city.

I have some trips planned- I need to plan some more and soon.