Here I am in Varanasi and death is in the air.
It's not just a figure off speech. The heart of Hinduism on the
banks of the Ganges, Varanasi is not like any other city I've been
to. At least the riverside part of it - the city part is just
like every big city in India. Which is to say crazy and
fascinating all at the same time. The temptation would be to compare the riverside to
someplace like Venice. But that would only be for the waterfront
orientation of things.
Bathe in the holy waters of the Great Mother and your
sins are washed away. Die and be cremated (which is to say
burned, not "made into ice cream" which would be a new twist on death)
and achieve moksha and thus stop the endless cycle of birth and
death during which you have no choice but to get stuck in traffic and
watch reality TV. Converts to Hinduism, the line starts to the
left. (A bit of a cultural side note: there are no lines in
India. The British gave India many things - some not so good to
be sure - such as a more-or-less common language, a legal system,
railways, etc., but one of the things that didn't rub off from 300
years of Britishness was the singular British ability to form a neat
and orderly queue. Last year when the London tube was rocked with
bombs, rather than panic, millions of Englishmen (at least as shown by
TV footage) appeared to form neat, orderly queues and head not just for
the exits but then walk all the way out to London's suburbs as if they
were school kids returning to class from afternoon tea. India does
not have lines. It's one of the things that's a bit confounding
as a tourist, particularly one who is - of course - concerned about
maintaining the sparkling clean reputation of considerate American
travelers abroad. Just when you think you're at the front of the
amorphous scrum that serves as a line, say at a railway station,
someone - or "someones" more often - will slide in front of you from
the sides. There never seems to be any animosity, it's just a
simple fact that Indians are largely unconcerned with an orderly flow
of people or vehicles.) We join this blog update already in progress - I thought I would end my Indian adventure in Varanasi
and thus make it the fitting end of my subcontinental cycle. To
make a long story short, a had a change of plans that involved
self-prescribing Tinidazole, and Varanasi made sense as a next step
rather than the last one. But I digress, which shouldn't surprise you by now. The major architectural feature of the city is its riverside ghats which is probably redundant because a " ghat" is a slope or set of steps often near a river. Look it up if you don't believe me. There are dozens of them along the Holy Mother
and it is along the riverbank that the city's hallmark activities take
place. It is here that Hindu devotees (and the occasional
overzealous Japanese tourist) take the plunge and bathe in the
river. It really has to be a leap of faith and not just for the
mythological side of which god did what with the river. No,
rather the faith one has in bathing in the Ganges must go hand in hand
with the city's other main attraction if you can call it that: the end
of the line for Hindus in the form of cremation. (Again, I was
going to say that this has nothing to do with milk or cream or butter,
but, in fact, I think ghee is sometimes involved.) The issue is
that as someone who has not, as they say here, "expired" (i.e. "died")
yet (ah, c'mon, it's inevitable, right?), bathing in the river could
easily lead to the deadly side of town: the burning ghats with their
funeral pyres. You see, the holiest water for the world's billion
Hindus (give or take) is also one of the world's more polluted
waterways. I met a scientist-cum-religious scholar-cum-computer
technician yesterday (which probably is not an atypical business card
here) who told me that he was doing research on the river and Hinduism
and mental processes and mantra vibration (yada, yada, yada) and that
this area of India was purified by the earth's gravitational pull (he
told me the exact coefficient (and gave me a banana too) and I'm sure
that said number had a "point" and a "three" in it). Thus, the
Ganges was safe to swim in, whereas a dirty river in the south of
country was not. I was thinking that that would make Boston
Harbor fine and dandy but surely there's an X-factor I'm not aware of. But the city's lack of hygiene is largely
disregarded. It is one of the few cities in the world (one would
hope) where you can see dozens of people doing their wash in the river
... within a few short meters of a body being burned. Likewise,
it would seem to be one of the few cities where you can see people
swimming and washing themselves not far from a body floating in the
river. But that is the impression that persists about Varanasi:
it is largely death and ritual bathing in huge, outlandish,
Indian-sized quantities. In fact, much of the town is fairly
tranquil along the water where many of the buildings sit quiet and
empty, perhaps inwardly holding their forefingers to their thumbs and
chanting "om." I expected throngs of faithful running to the water
like an old fashioned backwoods baptism. Not so. In a few
weeks, that may indeed be the case and this may be the quiet before the
storm which arrives at the end of the month. And the burning
ghats are a small, small minority of the river real estate. And
for a city so connected to death it is strangely absent of a sense of
the macabre. I met a girl a few weeks ago who had already passed
through this neck of the woods and she described Varanasi as "a place
where death is beautiful." I'm not sure if I'm in full agreement
but the air here is a lot cleaner than you'd expect both literally and
figuratively. The death rituals have a certain beauty in
themselves but they are not overly clouded by sadness; I have not seen
tears here and maybe I need to look harder but with so many funerals,
I'd have thought that would be par for the course. In the way
that Varanasi is unique in the world, it may also be the only place
where the trees and power lines around crematoria are festooned with
kites that met their own (non-fiery) ends there. A little bit of Charlie Brown comedy in an atmosphere noire. What I mean to say, in case the metaphor is too
oblique, is that here in Varanasi, life and joy take their place right
next to death. People sell chai next to the pyres, nonchalantly
tossing aside the terracotta cups, and cows walk up and down the stairs
step for step with the untouchables who carry the wood for the fires
(it takes surprisingly little for the pyres, but it's all split and
carried by hand). In the same way, life along the ghats is a grab
bag. As the garland sellers sold strings of marigolds, I got a
shave and a haircut (for about two bits, for real) outside in front of
the main religious temple and then added on a plein air full
body massage for another dollar. (Fear not good readers, I was
clothed this time and there was no oil. Hopefully you've read the
previous entries or this will make no sense. Or it will make
sense, but the wrong kind of sense.) All of this was within arm's
reach of a cow and just as I finished, the very serious evening poojas
commenced in the same spot. With the bell ringing (with audience
participation this time), of course. Where else do you get this? Varanasi - like no other. | 
