Flies crowding in Nako.
On my arrival in Nako, a village in the Spiti valley, around late afternoon on 3 September 2022, I started taking pictures of the views outside, not bothering to close the door of my room.
When I returned after a short while, the whole room was crowding with houseflies. I had never seen so many flies glued to the walls at once. As if all houseflies of the village had gathered, perhaps to welcome me, perhaps to investigate.
Did they smell on me life? Or death?
Did they know something that I was blind to?
I do not much care, for I am a fly from this William Blake poem written in 1794:
Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want
Of thought is death,
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.