There are many places in India that people describe by telling you that you'll either "love it or hate it." No place typifies this statement more than the maelstrom that is Varanasi. The city is located in the northeastern state of Uttar Pradesh, which stretches from Delhi to the eastern state of Bihar, and borders Nepal along its northern boundary. Considered a very holy city by Hindus, Varanasi sits on the Ganges, at a place so far downriver from its headwaters that the pollution in the river has accumulated to a disturbing degree. It is the oldest continuously inhabited city in India, and one of the oldest in the world. Yet, the city has been pillaged so many times that few of its buildings are over 100 years old. When I pictured India from the US, what I saw in my mind's eye was Varanasi, with its colors, people, markets, pushcarts, pollution and cows. We had been warned by many about the difficult of traveling there; the book describes Varanasi as being worse than Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, in terms of being touristy and having touts harassing you for money or to take you to their shops. But off we went, Hannah, Sean and I, having lost Patricia in the Kashmir debacle and Tangi preferring to fly straight to Kolkata.
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| Dinner! |
On Thursday afternoon, the three of us boarded a train in Delhi, traveling for the first time in the AC compartments, rather than in Sleeper. Having traveled only in Sleeper thus far, AC was almost unrecognizable. Each berth contained two bunk beds, sleeping four to a berth, no one was standing or waiting to sit in your seat, and the tinted windows to the outside prevented the usual stares from passersby on the platform. We settled in and bought thalis for dinner from a vendor on the train, selling them from a cloth bag. We sat and chatted for a bit, me changing my seat to avoid the creepy staring of the stranger inhabiting the fourth bed of our berth, and easily went to sleep on the beds in the train. We woke up on the other side of India, emerging into the daylight like hatchlings with our backpacks on and out faces steeled to avoid the inevitable tour guides and auto wallahs. Indeed, we were followed from the minute we stepped onto the platform by a guy who later turned out to be an auto wallah but who was not wearing the standard grey uniform and looked like he just wanted our money. After some haggling, we settled on a price with the main auto organizer guy, as they have a number system at the station to ensure equitable distribution of business among the auto wallahs. Unfortunately for us, this meant we were going with our clingy new "friend," who, from the second we sat in his auto, began to berate us, and especially Hannah, for "judging" him and shooing him away before. Hannah tried to explain that we have to protect ourselves, but he kept insisting what a great guy he was and how wrong we had been, producing emails from a person in New York, thanking him for showing him around Varanasi. After our long train ride, the last thing we wanted was to be lectured about jumping to conclusions. In any case, he parked the auto and showed us the way to the guest house, through the dark, narrow streets of the Old City, dodging the cow dung lying in wait like smelly mines in a field. We checked in, ate some breakfast, and rested for a few hours.
Around noon, we set off in search of lunch, finding a recommended bakery that serves a huge variety of cheeses. Hannah and I watched as Sean ordered fondue and then proceeded to just eat his bowl of cheese when the bread ran out. So that was fun. After lunch, we walked through the winding alleys and descended the stairs to the ghats, small piers from which people depart in boats, enter the river to bathe, or just sit and watch the world go by. The river in Varanasi is the city's beating heart. While polluted and filthy, it is host to every possible life process that could include water. Children play in the river, jumping off boats and splashing in the water before scrambling up the stairs of the ghat to repeat the performance. Women bring clothes to wash in the river, hanging them to dry on every available post or standing object. Families bathe their children and each other, shampooing their hair and then bending to rinse the soap in the grimy, green water. Herders bring buffaloes and goats to wash and cool off by the shore. Sadhus, Hindu holy men, and people from all walks of life come to the Ganges to perform pujas, washing their sins away, filling containers with contents of the holy Ganges to take home with them. Pilgrims stand waist deep in the water, sometimes in lungis, sometimes in full saris or salwar kameez, sometimes naked, filling small clay and metal dishes with water and touching it to their foreheads and lips. Rowers sit idly on the ghat, waiting for tourists to ask for a trip down the river, making repairs on the boats and waiting for pitch on the bottom to dry. Women sweep the stairs and open plazas of the ghats with knee-high brush brooms, removing dust and trash that will be replaced moments after they finish. The buildings, largely crumbling and in disrepair, loom over the river, built high on the hill to avoid flooding when the river swells during the monsoon. Barbers, often cutting the hair of men in mourning, but also doing routine shaves and trims, set up shop by placing a mirror on a wall and a chair to face it. Locals sit in stands along the ghat, selling marigolds, incense, candles, prayer cloths, beads, crystals and vessels for prayer in the water. Other vendors display water bottles and snacks for tourists, and all the while, goats, cows, dogs, buffaloes, and a rare chicken or two are passing by, enjoying and benefitting from the gifts of the Ganges as much as anyone else, eating garbage and shitting where they please. Brilliant colors infuse the saris of the women, as well as the boats, and the orange robes of sadhus stick out against the neutrals of the ghat. The scene is beautiful in a fascinating way, a way that prevents you from turning your head for fear of missing a second of action.
We walked for about an hour, the shadows becoming longer, until we reached the smaller of the "burning ghats." Being a holy city, Varanasi is an auspicious place to be cremated, as it is believed that doing so will allow a person to be released from the cycle of reincarnation if their soul is deemed worthy. Bodies are brought and shipped from all over India and the world to be cremated on the Ganges--literally: we saw a box with a mailing label from Saudi Arabia. There are two main burning ghats in the old city, and on the first day we walked to the smaller one. Locals stand at these ghats offering to give explanations about the cremations in exchange for either money or the chance to take you to a shop, from which they receive commission. We started talking to a very nice man from Varanasi, who explained the rituals and practices of the cremation. First, he said that the whole body is not sent out into the river; rather, for men, only the chest/shoulder is left in the river, and for women, only the hip. This is because these body parts are considered the centers of strength for each gender. If the soul is to be released from the cycle of reincarnation, the fish and animals in the water will eat and decompose the flesh. If they person's soul was not pure enough to escape reincarnation, the fish will leave the body alone and it will not decompose.
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| Pile of wood and the temple containing the eternal flame |
The funeral pyres must burn for twenty-four hours and are tended to by a specific group from the Dalit (Untouchable) caste. These people, the poorest and most shunned of the poor and shunned, are not paid for their grueling labor. It is traditional for families to leave earrings and nose rings and other precious objects on their loved ones during cremation, so people are cremated with all kinds of jewelry on them. The men who tend the fires may keep any gold or valuables they find in the river following cremations. You can see them in waist and chest deep water, with large shallow pans, sifting carefully through the polluted silt for their livelihood. It is extremely taboo for anyone other than these people to keep valuables they find in the Ganges that may have belonged to someone who was cremated there. Thought the families of those cremated do not pay those who do the literal dirty work, they do pay for the wood used in the pyre, which ranges in price from expensive sandalwood to cheap mango wood and several steps in between. It takes over 300 kilos of wood to cremate one person--logical, considering how long the fire has to blaze, but intense when you consider how much wood that takes. Each burning ghat contains a temple-like structure, housing an "eternal flame" that Hindus believe was lit by the destroyer god Shiva over 4,000 years ago and has never been extinguished. When the fire is to be lit, the man in mourning--either the oldest or youngest son, usually--takes a handful of brush and lights the end with the sacred fire. He brings it to the pyre, and walks around the body five full times, touching the flame to the wood on each rotation. We watched this happen, the mourner dressed in white, with his head shaven, but for a small patch in the back. It is inappropriate for funeral attendees to cry or show emotion, as this inhibits the soul from resting peacefully and avoiding reincarnation. It is for this reason that women are never allowed to attend these funerals. You know those women--you can never trust them with that moodiness! Though it was outlawed by the British over 100 years ago, women continued to perform sati, the practice of a widow throwing herself on her husband's funeral pyre and self-immolating. Following several high profile incidences of this, the Indian government passed stricter laws to prevent sati in 1987. When we asked our guide why there were no women at the funerals, he gave the explanation of women interfering with peaceful closure by showing emotions, and followed up by saying, "Women used to throw themselves on their husband's burning bodies. This is better, nah?"
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| Shopping for silk |
When our lungs started to choke on ash, we followed the explainer man to his family's silk shop, where we ooohed and aaahed at the truly brilliant silk handwork of tablecloths, scarves and saris that were way out of our price range. After the merchant had opened what seemed like every package he owned, we headed out, much to his disappointed, but not before poor Sean was guilted into buying something. The three of us got in an auto and headed to Assi Ghat, one of the larger ghats, that is the furthest south of the major ghats in Varanasi. Children that looked about nine or ten approached us, selling candles to send down the river for puja. We were shocked at how good their English was, considering how poorly our students speak the language, and they told us that they go to school during the day and only do this in the evening. The kids were so sweet and adorable, asking us questions, playing in the sand, laughing those genuine laughs that only kids are capable of. One sidled up to me after we had been with them for a while and asked me to buy a candle, which I refused. He then asked for a mango juice, to which I happily obliged. He led me to the nearest cafe, alternating between running forward and waiting for me to catch up. I asked him where his shoes were and he said he didn't have any; I wanted to buy him a pair but everything was already closed for the evening. I bought him his drink and he bounded away, meeting up with his friends and sipping his soda through a long straw. I thought about how dangerous this occupation was for these kids, how vulnerable it made them to walk up to strangers and solicit money. But what can I do?
After a long night of, ahem, indigestion following the felafel I ate for dinner, I woke up early and took a walk on my own along the ghat. The place was bustling, with tons of people walking around, schmoozing, washing, watering, fixing, selling, buying, fortune telling, sweeping, begging, shaving, boarding boats, rowing boats and unloading boats. A man had me sit down so he could but the red tikka on my forehead and lead me in saying a blessing, but I hightailed out of there when he asked me for 1,000 rupees. I took tons of pictures and made my way back to the guest house, where Sean had left his room without telling us and Hannah and I had breakfast. We headed down the ghat in the opposite direction to where we had been, reaching the larger burning ghat and viewing the ceremonies from the balcony of a nearby building. We wound through the labyrinth of wood piles, needing to escape the smoke and ash that burned our lungs and stung our eyes, and then twisted and turned our way through the alleys of the old city to reach a place that serves only the most delicious lassis in the world. The yogurt drinks were served in unglazed earthenware cups that were discarded after one use--but weren't plastic! Thanks, ridiculously low cost of labor in India! Making our way to a famous temple, we were denied access because they wanted to see our passports (seriously), which we didn't have on us (obviously), and we exited the old city. A rickshaw ride later, we found ourselves at a recommended fixed price textiles shop, where we spent the next two hours poring over incredible, affordable silks and pashminas. The shop owner was a rare gem, going our of his way to make sure we knew his goods were authentic, asking us to guess which scarves were better quality (got it wrong every time but one), and showing us how to tell the difference by burning strands of fiber and having us smell and feel the difference. After some happy purchases, we returned to the guest house to find Sean and I took a much needed nap.
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| Evening puja |
In the evening we headed down to the ghat to observe the nightly puja, observed by literally hundreds if not thousands of people including locals, tourists, and pilgrims. The long, narrow boats clustered near the ghat, forming what looked like a flotilla of spectators. We stayed a few minutes and listened to the singing, before heading away from the crowd and getting dinner at the bakery again. The next day we packed our bags, hung out in the hostel and read for a bit, before strong-arming our way through the swarming Sunday foot traffic in the Old City to get to a waiting taxi. All in all, we had an incredible experience in Varanasi and felt privileged to have been there. To Kolkata we flew!
To see my photos from Varanasi, click here.
