Life and Death in Banaras

2.26.06 Varanasi
Well, my time in India is almost at an end. My posts have been few and far between this month. Part of the reason is that internet is not as pervasive as we're used to, and part of the reason is that life here is too interesting to want to take a digital break. I've immensely enjoyed my recent adventures: careening across the Punjabi plains in a rattletrap govt. bus, gazing upon the awe-inspiring Golden Temple of Amritsar, bathed in lights and the full moonlight; paragliding in Pakistan with a former pakistani paratrooper; seeing firsthand the incalculable destruction of the Kashmir Quake in Balakot, where 3 out of 4 citizens were buried alive, where the stories of the survivors inspire dread and amazement; skiing down the carve-ariffic slopes of Petalsu amidst the humbling and drool inducing jagged peaks of the Upper Kullu Valley Himalayas; dancing the night away to the non-stop Bharati folk tunes at the Iceland Hotel with India's future generation of ski bums; dipping in the scalding hot temple bath at Vashisht; and eating the best food in the world, every day.
And I can't say yet if I'm ready to return. So many new sensations and impressions. India cannot be understood until you walk down the dusty alleyways, hopping over the piles of fresh cow dung, through the putrid clouds of open sewers, relieved by the clouds of sweet incense, assaulted by the onslaught of lawless traffic, unrelenting horn blasts and bell clangs, avoiding oncoming or road-blocking water buffalo, numb to the million voices trying to hook you into their scheme: "Hello Sir" and "Rickshaw sir" and "Which country from sir?" and "You need boat ride?" and "hello friend, where you going friend?" never ceasing, day or night. The loudspeakers blaring hindu prayers, sikh prayers, muslim prayers, politicians prayers, lottery prayers. The air pollution, sometimes downright head-shrinking, the Karachi kough, the dust-filled nostrils, the dried out eyeball shredding contacts, the sense of dread. Haven't even really talked about the grinding poverty, in your face, hand reached out, "two rupees sir," then fingers clamped in a feeding motion to the mouth, big white eyes peering up at you through the dark grime on their faces, the filth in their ratty unkempt hair, some offer puja candles on the ghats, some do back handsprings for your delight, some do nothing but look like the world will never give them a chance in their short miserable lives. how can i shut them out, all of them? but you do, you have to in order to survive. you can only offer prayer, some kind of loving smile, maybe play with them a bit to take their minds off everything.
Yet everywhere you look simultaneously there are reasons to smile... joyful schoolkids playing cricket in any open space they can secure, colors, colors everywhere, bright green and yellow sarees, orange scarves, royal blue veils, purple bougainvillea blossoms, orange marigold garlands, white tikka powder on the dark sahhu's forhead, glorious magenta varanasi sunrises, sapphire blue Ganges (from afar, up close it looks rather chunky with green algae blooms along the shore), awe-inspiring himalayan peaks, massive stone teeth dark blue sky, coated in a mantel of glorious, river feeding, scorching plains quenching snow, the red turbans of the holy men lining the galis of godoulia, and the rows of red carrots punctuating the sea of colors along the food stall street. The cacophonous symphony of voices uttering prayers ad nauseum in between foundation shaking gong blasts in the Tibetan Buddhist Temple at Sarnath, the site of the Buddhas first sermons. The simple joy of crunching a fiery hot pani puri in your mouth, and the sublime joy of sharing the Havla with good friends at the gurudwara.
This country is so fantastically different from our own, every day lasts a lifetime here. And every day floats in the air, sometimes like the intoxicating, life-giving whiff of jasmine, sometimes like the achingly familiar smell of barbecued flesh swirling around the cremation ghats. Yesterday I sat and watched several bodies get cremated along the Manikarnika Ghat. the charred and stiff outstretched arm of a passed soul quickly grabbed my morbid attention. you could hear the flesh sizzle. you could smell the familiar barbecue flesh smell, like the smell of any chicken or steak you throw on the grill. i may never eat barbeque again. but besides that earth-shattering revelation about the smell of seared flesh, there was something overwhelmingly calm about the whole scene, the grieving families, the immediate sight of a human souls departure from life cycle to another. Today is Shivratri, the Hindu celebration of Lord Shiva's dance of creation, the Tandava. Many hindus will be visiting the temples around this ancient city today, performing puja as they fast all day long and keep vigil at their nearest temple or home lingum shrine. The Shiva Lingum, in case you're not up on your Hindu mythology, is the symbol of his phallus, a symbol of Lord Shiva and his creative and destructive powers and of his power over all other gods. Home versions of the lingum are often in the form of vaguely phallic shaped stone with a basin around to collect the offerings slathered on top or laid about its base. Here are some ways Shiva is honored today:

On the day of Shivratri, the lingam is bathed with the five sacred offerings of a cow, called the panchagavya - milk, sour milk, urine, butter and dung. Thereafter the five foods of immortality - milk, clarified butter, curd, honey and sugar - are placed before the lingam. Dhatura and jati, though poisonous fruits, are believed to be sacred to Shiva and thus offered at his temple. Eleven is considered to be the sacred number of the Lord. Devotees keep a fast (vrat) on Shivratri and observe strict rules, for vardan (boon).

Another way Banarsi's young men (of which there seems to be a bottomless supply) celebrate this holy evening in this holiest of cities is by drinking bhang lassi's (ganja infused milk drinks) and roam about the streets in gleeful packs, singing, cheering, taunting, fondling each other. The ghats and galis become the scene of an intimidating brew of testosterone, cow dung and millions of misquitos and moths. Such was the scene last night around the Assi Ghat, the southern most among Kashi's ghats. Throngs of young men pulsed in the streets, swarmed the steps, danced on the dust and dung covered ghats, and I couldn't move any faster to get up and out of that scene and into the trance-inducing atmospherics of the Dhrupad Mela music festival, one of the finest music festivals I've ever attended. No more than 200 people come in and out of the performance tent perched atop the Tulsidas Ghat, the haunting, shamanic vocals of the dhrupad style, the hypnotic drone of the veena, the tenpura, the sitar, the body-swaying punches and rolls and evershifting rhythms of the tabla drums, inducing deep trances in all listeners, only broken up an hour later by the end of the song or the cackling screech of the rhesus monkeys twirling atop the surrounding buildings. The scene at dawn, with the dying wails of the dhrupad singer ushering in the sun and a new day, the early risers taking their daily bath the ganges, the blast of furnace warmth blowing in from the Gangetic plains, chasing off the evening cool, chasing off the swarms of moths.

India is a visceral experience like no other. It fully deserves a lifetime of exploration, but even then don't expect to understand it. From the Jain priest marching naked down the street with his hair pulled out and his shouting entourage shepharding his barefoot trek across the Jain holylands of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, to the annoying habit of throwing all the trash out in the streets, in the parks, out their cars, anywhere but the trash bin, if there is one. India seems stuck in time, the Mughal era, the era of Ashok, the era of harrappan dawn. Yet it's moving fast into the future, fumbling and groping and bribing it's way into the modern digital world. A billion people are caught in between, and there are a billion stories to be told. Thanks for sharing the journey.