The house filled with a scream as a dog kept barking at the door with ceaseless rings. The sound of flip-flops became louder as Sarita speeds down to the main door with puffy eyes. It was another morning of random neighborhood kids playing their little mischiefs. The quacking ducks in a nearby pond made it look like a joke. A frown on her face appeared as she stood tall at her door next to the pomeranian clenching her leg.

She banged the door on her back and flounced up to her room with messy long hair and dried drool on her right cheek. Still, in her checked pajamas, she slipped back into her bed and covered herself with the duvet she bought online last week on a mega sale deal. A notification popped on her phone, she takes out her hand out of the covers to reach for her phone.
Her mom pulls the bed cover and tells her to go and buy milk in mock outrage. With no choice left being the only jobless daughter in her 20s, she is no less than a doormat in the house.

She washed her face and walked out of the home with a steel jug in her hand.

The air filled with peals of bells from the nearest Ganesh temple. As Sarita walked past her home, she bowed her head to greet a granny from next door. She had a prayer plate with flowers and vermillions. The tilak almost covered her forehead, and a grin on her face displayed her new set of golden teeth matching perfectly with the marigold petals on her hair bun.
Tuesday morning is usually full of devotees adding clamors to the everyday morning regime of locals. Married women in their saris walked in groups with Gagris on their waists. Another group pitched higher from a nearby well as they hoist up water from a jug; probably reused after finishing up engine oil.

She walked through newly paved alleys followed by a brisk walk of pedestrians with their noses covered as a sweeper moved her broom. The dogs wailed around her for biscuits like every other morning. The barber played his everyday Bollywood track matching beats with the scissors cuts on his first customer.

Boomers in falcha beamed with sunrays were reading headlines of the day in newspapers while young kids rushed on their school uniforms with bottles hung on their necks. In a corner, women were loud with profane bargains to a vegetable vendor.
The dwellers of Bhaktapur never had big all-in-one departmental stores filling every corner of the town with bustles. With terracotta roofs conjoined together, houses through the paved alleys are picturesque. Some are filled with people’s laughter enjoying halwa puri( fried puff bread with porridge), and some with municipal workers collecting waste. The morning waste collection anthem works as an alarm for many residentials.

For people like Sarita, it’s an everyday routine to get milk from local people who reared cows and buffalos for yogurt and milk.