Varanasi

And so it come down to this... my penultimate post. The final leg... and my last new experience of my personal epic. And what better way to punctuate it than with Varanasi: City of Lights, of Gods, of Shiva... a full stop.

I came, as I have done so many times in India, with my preconceptions, expectations, fears... and as usual had them all torpedoed ruthlessly by India's perpetual need to confound and be contrary (my favorite aspect of this place by far... and also my least favorite... which is kind of fitting).

I was expecting filth and hordes of snapping tourists and pickpockets and hassling shopkeepers and money hungry false prophets and stampeding buffalo and the stench of charred flesh. What I found was quite different. Thanks in no small part to two friends I made in Sunil and Amar (see the photo)... two Varanasi locals I bumped into just after arriving who did nothing but do everything to show me an amazing time in Varanasi. They took me to all of the temples... including getting me into the Golden Temple (not usually allowed for foreigners... and if so usually at a very steep cost). This did involve a farcical interview with a room full of armed police officers in which I had been instructed to stick to the story that I was a practicing Hindu... especially painful when they asked me what I knew about Shiva... I won't give my spluttered response or try to describe to you the new shade of red that my cheeks invented. Painful, but worth it. They also took me out on their boat, to get drunk and watch the fire pujas (prayers) to mother Ganga on the Main Ghat, took me to their local hangouts, chai, eateries but also did a fine job of introducing me to all the locals who might otherwise have been hassling me for cash... I felt properly at home by the end of the first afternoon and know more Indians here that probably the rest of India combined. Generally they have been fricking legends and I can't thank them enough, though this post is most definitely dedicated to them and their posing ways!

Oh yeah... they also lived right next to the burning ghats and over the past few days I have spent a lot of time with them drinking chai and watching the pyres. Two hundred bodies a day... twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year burn on a small area on the banks of the River Ganges. It can be pretty gruesome to watch... sometimes a little too much. But it was also strangely beautiful... it seemed to make so much sense after all of the things I have seen in India... it seemed to fit so well. Even in death there is so much vibrancy and colour and tradition and smell (of sandal wood and spice not hair and flesh) and stoic virtue (the family are not supposed to show any emotion as they watched their loved ones turn to ash) and Indian-ness on the banks of yet another epic... the Ganges. It just seemed to ring with the same sound that I've been hearing but not really noticing all the way through my journey around India... it seemed to be bound by that same invisible thread that people say holds this country together.

I don't know, as ever I am unable to express in words what I felt as I watched... just that it made sense, which isn't a sense that this country seems to offer too freely.

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A minor aside about the photo below: This lady spends her time living by the burning ghats, I met her briefly in one of the chai shops that Sunil and Amar frequent. Years ago she was brought here by her family to die (quite common as it is a great honour to die in Varanasi) ... she didn't die and so her family left her here... alone. She was quite well off and was left with a lot of gold and jewellery but she was conned out of it all by ne'er do wells and is now destitute and lives on the streets off the kindness of strangers like Sunil and Amar. Apparently her nephew came up a year or two ago to take her home but she refused, she said she would stay in her home, Varanasi, and wait to die. I thought it was a pretty cool story.