As someone else on this page remarked earlier, mornings at the Kala Ghoda festival are special. Reminds me of times I’ve gone flamingo-watching in Sewri on weekend mornings. There and here, there’s a slow move to wakefulness afoot, and it lends an air of lazy stretchy languor to everything.

So on Saturday morning (Feb 8).

I stumble across a man eating breakfast behind one of the stalls.

Two men sit on the stairs chatting in whispers even though they don’t need to but maybe they feel they must. When I first see them, I stop short — because from that angle, with the vast branches of a tree spreading above them, they are the only two humans in my field of view. And there hasn’t been a previous moment at the Festival when I could have made such a statement.

The mirrors on the outside wall of a clock and furniture (and mirror) stall are an attraction. I look at them from where I sit and it’s like looking through a tunnel, even giving me the odd sensation of looking back in time, at distant people doing distant things. A man — not the breakfasting one — stops to comb his hair using a mirror; then a young girl in a shocking yellow dress stops to preen.

In a patch of welcome sunlight on this crisp morning, a cat sits neatly, licking itself and stretching.

A few feet from where I’m sitting, in front of the amphitheatre, a slender woman in a soft peaked cap and keds with fluorescent orange laces talks on her cellphone. In whispers too. She gets up and walks off, which causes heads to turn in a small knot of young men strolling in the other direction.

Empty taxis wander through, turn and wander back, much like the pacing of caged animals.

A group of men push a handcart laden with several fat gunny sacks, filled to the bursting with greens — grass, lettuce, some other unidentifiable leafy stuff. On top of the sacks is a bicycle.

A security guard sits cross-legged on a table and yawns.

I learn via a (muted, of course) PA system that Dove’s “Zero Damage System” will make my hair so soft that my hands … (that part fades away). Also, my hair will be three times softer, smoother and stronger.

In a shed behind Elphinstone College, I look through a hole at one of my still-favourite Bombay sights, precisely because it is in this shed. Two larger-than-life statues of British somebodys — Kings or Generals or somebody — gathering dust and cobwebs.

On the seats in front of the amphitheatre, someone has left a copy of “Letter to a Christian Nation”, by Sam Harris.

Oh wait. That’s forgetful me. I run over and retrieve it.

And all through this morning, I’m thinking, so sue me: here I am in this place for the senses and the heart and the mind. All through this week, there has been news about a Thackeray assault on non-Maharashtrians. This morning, there was front-page news about a gang of political men lynching a rival political man. Yes, they killed him with sticks and iron rods. As a Maharashtra minister and several policemen watched.

My mind is unable to reconcile those assaults with this place I’m in. Yours?