I was leaving college today when I saw one of those cycle-vans that carry dead bodies. It was going towards the morgue.

It had a body wrapped in a plastic sheet. One end was tied to the front end of the van, just below the seat for the driver. Or whatever one calls the guy who operates those things.

But the other end was free, and at this end the frequent jolts had caused the sheet to come unwrapped. One could see the head, and part of her forearm, which was folded across her neck. It was, or had been, a young woman. She had those white bangles on her forearm, and a large vermilion streak on her forehead. A little to the right of that, there was a cut, a gash, which went up past her hairline.

The van dodged some beggar-children playing on the street, giving the corpse another jolt, and went past me.

The children stopped their game for a moment and gazed after the van, with incurious eyes.
They are inured to horror.

I envy them sometimes.

There is a beggar near the gate outside the hospital. He takes all his clothes off sometimes, and they say he is mad.

Madness is quiet; insidious; and fundamentally erosive.
One does not go mad in a crescendo of shrill ideas, but in silent swirls of disjointed thoughts.

I must guard against disjointed thoughts.