Em and I saw a dead man in the street today.

Em and I have been taking Spanish classes at the University of Buenos Aires. This is the same University that Che Guevara attended. We've been doing it for about 3 weeks so far, although i missed quite a few of the first lessons due to enrolling late, and entertaining two lovely red-headed visitors from Sydney.

Anyway, we normally catch the Subterraneo to the class, but today for some reason it was closed, so we had to quickly figure out which bus to catch. We got the 106, and arrived about 20 minutes late.

The class went OK, nothing out of the ordinary. We have two teachers, and one is hilarious, while the other seems to be in a bad mood quite a bit. It's not fun when your teacher is in a bad mood. But tonight we had the hilarious one.

But getting back to the point of this story, we decided to get the bus back home again because we weren't sure whether the subte would be open. So we did, but the bus takes a different returning route to the one it takes there, because of one way streets etc.

So we were a little lost, and we didn't know what route the bus was taking, but luckily i have a map on my phone, and i could follow where we were going. So we got to a street closish to our house, but i kinda thought we might get closer so we stayed on the bus to see. We didn't get any closer, and in fact only got further away, so we got off quite a few blocks from my house and walked. My god, this is boring... Ok, i'll get to the point.

So walking down 9 de Julio, we saw some commotion up ahead. Em saw it first, which is surprising because she can't see anything without her glasses. Maybe she was wearing them... probably was. I noticed a man lying in the street and a police man and a group of other people standing over him. Nearby on a park bench was a woman being consoled by another woman, and parked in the road was an ambulance.

We didn't really want to sticky-beak so we walked past quickly, and saw that the man was older, dressed nicely, with gray hair. He was lying on his back, with one hand on his stomach and the other at his hip.

Em asked me, "Is he dead?". I told her i doubted it, and we kept walking. But when we turned back again, they were covering him with a white sheet. So we can be pretty sure that he was dead.

This is probably the fifth dead person I've seen in real life. Strangely, one of the others was also in Argentina, on the way to Calafate, seven years ago. He (or she) was lying on a road in the middle of nowhere, with a broken windshield covering him, and his arm protruding from under it at an unnatural angle. Beside him was an overturned jeep and two men who waved us past.

The other four were my grandfather, in hospital, Emily's grandmother in an open casket at the funeral, and two people who were being cremated in Varanasi, India. I don't know if i can count the human jaw we saw in the gutter in the filthiest city in the world, Agra.

I remember feeling strong emotions for every other body I've seen. Even the ones i didn't know. Watching the cremations in Varanasi was an incredibly moving experience. The body under the windshield shocked me, perhaps partly because of the mystery of who they were, what had happened, and who the men were who were with him. Of course, being with your dead grandfather surrounded by family is an incredibly moving experience. As is experiencing the funeral of your partners grandmother, and witnessing emotions that are rare for a family.

But today, i felt nothing. I don't know why. Perhaps it was because the body lay uncovered. There was no mystery to who he was, just another old man. Or maybe it was because I didn't think he was dead when i passed him, so i didn't have time to register that this was an abnormal situation. Maybe it was because he looked so peaceful. He wasn't in a strange position, hadn't fallen strangely, he looked like he was simply resting. Or maybe I've seen enough dead bodies now not to be shocked.