Discourse in the Breakfast Room at the Hotel

Dear 4 Ladies in the Breakfast Room,

I just wanted to thank you for letting me overhear and record your conversation here in the breakfast room at the hotel. I couldn't have been more entertained. Hope you have a good trip home. Perhaps you should rent The Princess Bride. Action, romance, and the folks who die are only mostly dead.

This man I know bought a pet cemetery. He buried a horse one time. It's not like you can say, lead that horse. Walk over here, die over here. We've got one in the yard. The kid's playground is over there and the garden.

Oh, we had to do that one time. My poor daddy. I had a pick axe. He walked over to the big sugar maple. He said. 'We're not burying him there."

Our family pet died, the one we had from the time I was eight or nine. He was the sweetest thing. He died when I graduated from high school. My mama and daddy, they had gotten up and he had died. It was like a death. My daddy got up and dug a grave.

Brenda is way past her prime. We fix her omelets. She hates it when she has to go to the kennel. Um.m.m It's too much, I'm sure.

We've got to leave before it's too late. We can't drive late into the night. We'll each be driving thirty minutes and say, "OK, it's your turn."

Well, we can just sing. That'll keep you awake.

Let's get a movie. We can listen to that.

OK, but we have to get an action movie, one with lots of mysterious music, "Da, da, Duh."

Yes, nothing that's quiet. Not the Notebook. That will make me cry. I couldn't even watch that, my children watch it, but I can't watch that. How about Martian Child?

Oh, no. Not about a child. Anything about a child is real.

I can't watch movies like the Horse Whisperer, "I cry!" That horse died. It reminds me of when I was trying to get my mare pregnant. We had a beautiful stud palomino! She finally got pregnant and had the cutest little colt. He would just follow me. I'd go out and call him and he'd leave his mama and come to me. Then in 2000, that tornado come through. They come and say, that little horse won't lead. I go out and he's paralyzed.

The next day the vet comes and puts him down. I just couldn't stand there and watch that.

We could stay here another night!

I'm not thinking about that yet. When we get home I have to give away 4 kittens.

Have a great trip.

BRD

Female Rickshaw Driver

Dear Sunitha Choudhury,

For those of us who have read books like The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar and have seen movies like Water, directed by Deepa Mehta, your story is especially wonderful. I wish you well in your bid for a seat in Parliament.
BRD

Note: Read about Sunitha Choudhury at Al Jazeera's English version

"First she escaped a violent child marriage to achieve the unthinkable - becoming the first and only woman to drive an auto-rickshaw on the streets of the Indian capital, New Delhi.

"Now she wants to become an MP.

"Sunitha Choudhury says she wants to be in parliament so that she can represent the poor.

"When she trudges around the slums and poor quarters of the suburb of Malivya Nagar, she tells the poor that she has the "same roots" as they do and, unlike other rich candidates from the established parties, understands their needs and sorrows."