India: A Million Mutinies Now - pg. 506

Women squatted and worked in spinach beds, and children worked with them, as children worked with adults everywhere in the lake, in gardens and on boats. Between the strips of gardens the algae-covered water lanes were lines with low-hanging willows. The houses were of timber and pale-red brick. People washed themselves on one side of a narrow plot; and on the other side young girls used the water to wash pots and pans. Some men, meeting among reeds, stayed in their boats and talked, as they might have done on a street. Some men and boys fished with rod and line. A boat passed with a cottage-cheese seller. Slowly - women and girls paddling their boats, women and girls more visible here, among the gardens - we came back to the busy highways of the lake, behind the houseboats.