Varanasi

28 March 2010

I’ll start by saying I recovered in Varanasi. I drank 5+ liters of water each day and I “gorged” on non-Indian food. There are so many tourists that many restaurants have menus with sections: Israeli food, Japanese food, Korean food, etc. But I did lose a lot of weight after Bodhgaya and have yet to find the full appetite to gain it all back.

Varanasi is magical. It is a busy city where most of the life exists within the “old city,” resulting in narrow, winding alleyways filled with shops, traffic, cows, and children’s cricket games. The ghats are most alive in the morning and evening with pilgrims and locals entering the Ganges to bathe and pray. Every evening there is a magnificent prayer set up with live musicians, a full sound system, and over ten small stages each with a priest performing the ganga aarti. This all occurs on the main ghat, Dasaswamedh Ghat, in the middle of the city and everyone comes out to watch and participate, filling in the cement stairs leading to the river. The top of the stairs are lined with beggars, a constant presence at any important religious venue. They provide the opportunity to improve one’s own karma with spare change. Pilgrims and tourists hire row boats to cruise the river observing the scene from the water, adding another hundred or so spectators to the aarti.

In every corner of the city, at any time there is worship occurring in some form. Men and woman wait in multiple lines that wrap around blocks, through the alleyways, to enter the main temple in the heart of Varanasi. They each hold a string of flowers, prasad (sweets), or a red clay vase full of milk and rose petals as an offering to Shiva, the god of dedication for Vishwanath Temple. The lines are lengthy and grow as everyone waits for the doors to be opened in the afternoon. Security is high here because of communal tensions between religions. Bags, cameras, and phones must be left in lockers and non-Hindus are not permitted inside the temple. On the ghats in the afternoon sit the holy-men, drinking chai and meditating despite the heat. Cows roam freely, often blocking the way of motorcycles and people in the narrow alleys. They shit anywhere and everywhere and you must be diligently aware of your steps to avoid catastrophe. The cows wear leis of marigold flowers, gifted by a devotee, some sport dhikas (colored powder/paint on the forehead). The cows are holy, and despite many being diseased, starving, or limping they are allowed free access to the city. Women occasionally take a minute to bless a passing cow and then themselves by lifting the filthy tail to touch their own forehead. Children play in the slow flowing Ganges river, the same river that raw sewage and city waste drains into, the same river that the remains of cremated bodies are put into; it is both the holiest and one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Varanasi is magical, full of prayer and devotion and completely indiscreet. The contrast of colors and filth, life and death, prayer and play form a chaotic scene that captivates many travelers.

Varanasi, once Benares, has probably existed like this for hundreds of years. It is one of the world’s oldest continually inhabited cities as well as one of the holiest places in India, so it is not surprising that it is crowded, chaotic, dirty, and wonderful. Varanasi is a microcosm of India, everything a traveler encounters on a trip through India will also be found in several days in Varanasi.

My first day in Varanasi I met a wonderful traveller my age, Megan. We began talking over lunch and I instantly felt a great appreciation towards her amazing outlook on traveling, India, and her excellent listening skills. She asked me questions about my trip through SE Asia, and after so much time alone I found myself eager to share stories. Megan was headed to visit the main cremation ghat and invited me to join her. I had read about the cremation ghats in my Lonely Planet and wasn’t sure if I wanted to go. It sounded extremely personal and vivid and I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. But I did know that if I would see the cremation ghats, an experience that was unique to visiting Varanasi, I would rather do it with a friend then on my own. I felt comfortable enough with Megan to tell her about my mother and my concern in visiting the ghats and she was very understanding. I decided to go with her and so my first experience in Varanasi was walking along the ghats with her towards the cremation ghat, discussing India and taking pictures.

I was so engrossed in our conversation that I was surprised when we had suddenly arrived at the cremation ghat. I didn’t know how I would handle it but I approached slowly with Megan, walking up the steps to get a view of the terrace by the river where piles of wood were being stacked for individual cremations. When my eyes fell on a fire I froze and when my eyes focused on the outline of the body, charred, black, and withering in the flames I immediately began to cry. I turned sharply away from the scene and sat down with my face in my hands. In seconds Megan was next to me, her arms around me in a warm hug. It didn’t feel like the hug of someone I met about an hour before, but like a hug from a close and dear friend. We sat there for a little while discussing grief, but were forced to walk away when a group of insensitive young Indian men refused to stop hitting on us with stupid questions. (Where are you from? Is it your birthday? Today is my birthday. Do you want to come to my birthday party? What is your name? What is your name? What is your name?)

What I found most interesting about the cremation ghats were how matter-of-fact the cremation process seemed to be. Men, born into a dalit caste designed for this position, spend their life carrying incredibly heavy logs of wood to and from the cremation ghat and then the bodies. They weigh each piece of wood on a giant scale to determine the price of the cremation. Some types of wood are more expensive, though more holy. It is a fine balance to use just enough wood to completely cremate the body, but not more than necessary to keep the cost down. What surprised me was how incredibly public the cremations are. People stand around watching, tourists and locals, but I didn’t see anyone I would have guessed was family of the deceased. There were no women present and no formally dressed men. Cremation is an important part of the Hindu life-cycle and dying in Varanasi is considered particularly auspicious because it is said to ensure moksha (liberation from the cycle of rebirth), where were the families of these people that were so fortunate to be cremated on expensive piles of wood, in Varanasi, and then given to the Ganges? I guess I would have to talk to a family to understand the process here. Even though it is so spiritually important that the body be cremated, it doesn’t seem to be appropriate for the family to accompany the body through this last stage. Or the other possibility is that the men around the ghat were family members but showing no signs of external grief or emotion, and with no community around them.

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The next day I met up with Dina in the morning at her hotel. It was very exciting to see her again and hear about her experiences in India. She described some of what she found challenging in India and I began to try to explain India and its diversity. I realized, as I was speaking, that my perspective and understanding of India has changed dramatically from my first trip and over the course of my time in India so far. My understanding of India is in a constant flux, altering with each new experience and encounter, strengthening and weakening with each frustration and amusement. That evening I wrote in my journal during dinner. I thought I had had some type of awakening, some new comprehension of India. I tried to explain it later in the night on the phone to Atish, but already that comprehension was waining and by the morning I wasn’t really sure about it anymore. It comes and goes, this understanding of life here, how people survive and thrive in one of the densest populations in the world. I like India, I love the people, I know I will continue to come back here, but this doesn’t mean I get it.

India is a mosaic. Myriad, diverse, dense, chaotic. There is more than 1 explanation for everything, every issue, ritual, tradition, and symbol. It didn’t make sense to me the first time. Keith (my UW program leader on my 1st trip) tried to tell me. For most India is simply crazy. What doesn’t make sense to us isn’t supposed to make sense, people just ignore the sense. Now I see that the “sense” we look for is there, but “sense” isn’t ours (non-Indian), it’s theirs. And you need to open your mind in a new way, a way not comprehended in the western world. I’m just learning how… Live & let live in a whole other way is how India works. Tolerance is huge here. I saw the problems before, now I see their solutions. The solutions are FAR from perfect. Tensions and frustrations are bound to rise. India has continued to be repressed under different empires for thousands of years. People found control in the caste system. Boiling points are reached throughout history with wars and riots. From the scale of state to slum there are outbursts of violence. But from day to day, the reality is that Indians live with a greater tolerance than we know. The challenges and frustrations westerners (NRIs and tourists alike) face when they visit India demonstrate our lack of tolerance in their world…

This was what I scribbled in my journal that night, some of it doesn’t make much sense to me anymore. The next night at a restaurant a talkative middle-aged Italian traveler said to Megan and I, “We travel to see other parts of the world. Asia, Africa, America are other parts of our world. But India, India is a different world. It’s not a part of our world, it is its own place.”

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Dina, a girl she was rooming with (Donna), and I went for a sunset boat ride along the river one night. It was a beautiful way to see the city and everyone offering prayers at the water’s edge. We learned something fascinating from our boat rower/guide… I had been curious when I arrived in Varanasi about the lack of development on the “other” side of the river. Varanasi is entirely built on one side of the river and the other side is just an open river bank, sand for a long way and eventually some trees in the distance. Other river-side cities in India I have visited are built up on both sides of the river equally. Our guide informed us that if you die in Varanasi you go to “heaven.” You escape reincarnation and are a free soul. But did we know what happened if you die on the “other” side of the Ganga? You are reincarnated as a donkey! No wonder no one wanted to live on the other side. I wonder how far the “donkey-zone” extends?

The rest of my time in Varanasi was really fun. I took two private dance classes with Megan. We learned the North Indian traditional style of dance- Kathak. We had a wonderful teacher and it was so neat that Megan and I were able to keep up with each other in the class, the similarity in our dance background was unexpected but allowed us to have a lot of fun and learn a lot together in the classes. We filmed the dances we learned and practiced in my room the next day, watching the videos on my computer. Learning the basics of Kathak was definitely a highlight from my time in Varanasi. And exploring the city with Megan during the day was wonderfully entertaining.

I left Varanasi after 4 nights. I left feeling a lot stronger than when I had arrived and headed off for my last stop before finally getting to Delhi. I felt optimistic, energetic, and excited. Atish would be arriving in India in 10 days and I couldn’t wait to share all of it with him.