Common-place.

It's the powder blue building by the rail tracks. It smells of fish and socks. It quakes, unpleasantly, every time a train passes. The rooms are clustered together. The doors are always open. The men, the retired and the unemployed, sit on old worn out cots. Playing cards, smoking foul smelling cheap cigarettes. The women, after they have finished their morning gossip over lukewarm tea, race after grubby children. Their own, more often than not. The grubby children, apart from dodging their mothers, chase each other. Sometimes scarily close to the tracks. Their noses running, their hair disheveled. Some poke at a snail, curiously. Some eat mud. And grin at each other.
The men walk around condescendingly. They drop in, at their neighbours' houses. Stop by for a glass of tea, some biscuits from a tin. Pretend to help the children with their studies. The children cling on the men, gleefully. Begging them for a chocolate. The men laugh indulgently. Hollow laughter and alcohol breath. They'll stop by for dinner sometime, they tell the woman of the house. She nods emphatically. She'll make mutton stew, she promises. And her husband can bring some country liquour, the men joke. She turns away with a shudder. The idea of drunken men in the house, makes her stomach turn.
The girls return from school. They hold hands and laugh. Their hair held back with frayed ribbons. The chipped nailpaint and the calculated walk- suggest the urge to grow up. They gush over one of the newborns. They turn away when the men walk by. They think of their own clandestine affairs. Young and foolish.
The night brings the men back from work. They snap at their wives, carelessly throw their wallets on the table. It hasn't been a good day, they mutter. The women bustle around with tea and oily snacks- bought hastily from the railway station. The men reach for the bottle and call out to their friends. The women try suggesting against it, but are soon quiet. The slap on their aching backs has made the required point.
The girls hide themselves in kitchens, reading in the yellow light. The children, sleep early. Their grubby feet covered with threadbare sheets.
The drinking begins. The jokes are crass, the voices obnoxious.
Somewhere, a child stirs. Calls for his mother.
Somewhere, a man- drunk out of his mind, leers at the a girl. Walks towards her. An hour later, walks away from her.
Somewhere, a girl runs a blade across her wrist. Her mindless affair, now over.
A fight breaks out, the alcohol bottle crashes. The dark brown liquid staining the stained carpet.

It may be the same day. It may be different days. It eventually all merges into each other. Into an all-too-familiar blur.