Bells and Smells

Instead of the squeaking of bike brakes, dog's barking, and guards calling "hao! hao!" (good! good!) instructions to anxious motorists trying to extricate their status symbols from the narrow roadway through the apartment complex, yesterday morning's waking sound was a man's voice in song, strong and tuneful. It was a relaxing, almost mystical song, that felt like it had no real beginning or end.

As the day wore on, the singer apparently could not find the end. The song was punctuated with a tinkling symbol and occasional light drum beats. And there were interesting and unusual cooking smells - not unusual in an apartment complex, but much stronger than usual.

We decided to go out for a spell, and halfway down the stairs we came across a bowl of ... well, who knows. It looked disgusting. It may have been food. Or - ? we just couldn't tell. It was in the middle of the steps on the second floor landing. We had to step over it or squeeze around it, and we ignored the urge to move it or tip it out - there was no one around. As we passed the the ground floor we noted that the security door had been propped open. Well, it's our door too, our security, so we kicked the prop aside and let the door slam.

Later in the day I came home on the bus. The security door was propped open again, and the stairwell was full of voices and the smell of incense. A crowd had gathered on the second floor landing, and the door to 202 was open. I could see a table had been set just inside the door, and a yellow-robed priest was there, still singing. Others were beating various small instruments - cymbals, little hand-drums and gourds. They were all dressed in dark clothes, and there seemed to be incense and foodstuffs on the table.

I pushed my way past the crowd, and on up the stairs. Once inside our apartment, I opened up the windows. Once again, the smell of burning - it is probably worth checking on these things in a building with no fire-escapes, smoke alarms, escape plan etc. Out the kitchen window I saw a group sweeping up the embers of a fire that had been lit on the edge of the roadway. Maybe someone has died, I know they light fires like that when someone dies.

As I settled down to relax with a DVD to shut out the sound, I felt like there was more going on, I could hear more singing and instruments and there seemed to be more and more incense. I went out onto our balcony at the other side of the building, and noticed a white circle had been drawn in the middle of the pathway I had just passed to return to the apartment. Yellow man and his friends were there, some with hands pressed together in front of them as if in prayer, others beating their tiny instruments. In the centre of the white circle was - I held my breath momentarily afraid that maybe they were about to cremate the body, but there was no body. There were a number of pink carrier bags and parcels with red ribbons. They were having a problem with the wind blowing away some little wisps of paper - I remembered the other day there was a woman in the road just outside the apartment with some of those little golden bits of paper that were blowing away and she seemed quite upset about it.

Then they lit the pile of stuff. Some of the tiny pieces blew away after they were lit, but mostly they stayed within the circle and in the bags as they burnt fiercely and were quickly reduced to a pile of ... funny little yellow things, like what we saw in the bowl on the stairs.

A couple of people remained with the smouldering remains until it was safe to sweep them up. Yellow man and the rest went back inside, and the smoke and singing came floating up the stairwell and pouring through every tiny gap around our burglar-proof metal front door. It continued until dark, when yellow man presumably went home.

This morning the white circle is still down there, with remnants of yellow stuff in the centre. I've noticed that no one walks or rides through it, they all go around it. And all is quiet. Just the squeak of bike brakes, and barking of dogs, and guards telling people how to park their cars.