Shyly, she smiles and mumbles a name I cannot understand. When I leave each village, the children gather round the car and press their hands against the window. I press back, and they watch us leave. On the long dirt and rock roadsides, nobody wears shoes. The women move back and forth to the wells with their silver jugs and newer, colorful plastic ones atop their heads.
Little girls practice balancing small bags of wheat, sometimes using a hand to steady their load.
Sheep are small dots in the distance of large tilled fields, with tiny figures with a stick beside them directing their way. Oxen struggle through clods of dirt, pulling wagons sometimes colorfully decorated in blues and oranges and yellows. Literally from head to toe, the women sport jewelry, not just for ornamentation but religious and social significance. The matching rings worn on the second toes of both feet, for instance, are a sign of marriage. It takes about four hours, with all the stopping, to make the two-hour trip to Mysore, where I have decided to stop overnight, so the journey tomorrow won't be so long.