A caste of sweeper-women patrol the floors of office buildings and hospitals, brushing aside dust with hand brooms almost as it falls, bent at the waist, never showing their faces as they move from doorway to doorway like the ghosts of children -- yet they wear saris a shade of blue as deep as a clear sky at twilight -- three degrees from black, yet suffused with light that strikes the eye like the smell of cinnamon. It is a blue that washes beyond the visible, that one could eat like pudding, that pulses like a living heart.
