The wonders of India
Varanasi
I have heard so much about Varanasi — the ancient, holy city spread along the banks of the sacred Ganges river, the city of a thousand temples, of wide ghats and cremation ceremonies. I was looking forward to visit this unique place, soak in the atmosphere, submerge in the interesting world of Hindu gods and heros.
We arrived late at Varanasi airport and took a prepaid taxi which sped along a surprisingly modern motorway till it hit Varanasi’s traffic! We had travelled 20 km to Varanasi quicker than the few kilometres in the city itself. The traffic was horrific, it is probably usually pretty bad, but it was exacerbated by the continuing Durga festival (same as Navrati, but after a few days it is called Durga Puja, at least that’s how I understand it). This holy city has many temples, but for this special time they for some reason feel compelled to build many more makeshift Durga temples straight along the sides of the streets, making the overcrowded roads even more congested.
Rocky
I booked a nice hotel close to the river, so when the taxi driver stopped on the side of the road and told us that our accommodation is on the left at the end of a dark and narrow alleyway, we assumed that there was no car access as the hotel is almost on the river banks. So we put our back packs on and marched, Martin behind me looking at his map and directing me where to go. We walked in the dark strange, spooky alleyways, I saw some poorly dressed children playing on a pile of rubbish, a stray dog nursing a big bloody gush on its back, few times I almost stepped in a cowpat. I could not comprehend how our posh hotel could be in such a location? Then Martin asked me to turn left, which I did, but was halted by a big cow blocking the turning. I am not squeezing through this gap! So we retraced our steps and walked straight into some kind of dingy brick courtyard, which looked like somebody’s abode. We got surrounded by a few young local men. I told them that we were looking for our hotel. They thought for a while and then decided to involve the wisest man from their community. Then a slight, skinny man appeared in front of us, his bare torso didn’t have a gram of fat. He agreed to help us, covered his bony back with a worn out shirt and walked with us accompanied by a few other eager locals. I don’t have to stress that the whole wandering around the poor neighbourhood in the darkness wasn’t a pleasant stroll.
To cut the long story short (as we had a few other encounters on our way, and also I eventually had to squeeze next to that cow in the alleyway) Rocky, as that was the man’s name, took us all the way to the hotel (located on one of the side roads, accessible by vehicles). On the way we had a little chat and he explained that he was working on the boat, but due to flooding he is short on earnings. That he was getting ready to retire for the night, but then we turned up in his home so that was his karma to help us. His English wasn’t very good, but that was the gist of the conversation. At the end we gave him some money grateful for his help, it wasn’t much, but he was delighted. He gave us a toothless smile and I felt like hugging his skinny frame. He confirmed my belief that people are inherently good, only sometimes their difficult circumstances scar their souls and make them bad! And the taxi driver who dropped us some distance from our hotel and gave us the wrong directions? Did he have bad intentions? No, there was another hotel with a similar name. Nobody wanted to harm us, we were meant to have another adventure! It was our karma?
Krishna
After a nice curry breakfast in our hotel we were ready to explore the city. I knew that we needed a guide to take us around the city, show us the temples, explain arcana of various beliefs, ceremonies and traditions. I was almost hoping for a profesor of theology with an enlightening lecture. And there he was — our guide I booked through the hotel was waiting for us by the entrance. And no, he wasn’t exactly a professor, he was the young chap we met in the reception the previous night. His name was Krishna, he was eighteen and his English was difficult to understand, but whatever he lacked in language skills he made up by his eagerness to show his home city that he was so proud of.
Krishna showed us many temples and tried to explain with his limited English the meaning of each statue, gesture and sign. He was very knowledgeable, unfortunately we had to guess many of the things he tried to explain. It was a bit like a charade — three words, sounds like…I was quite good at guessing though! We managed to gather the gist of things.
I was eager to know if the Hindu worshipers really believed in the array of half human half animal gods displayed in their temples. As far as I understood, it seems that they believe in one all powerful God, but as the human brain cannot grasp such an enormous concept, the God presents Itself in different forms or avatars. Thus it’s easier to relate to those smaller, more human like deities. They are responsible for separate aspects of our lives — if you want money — pray to Lakshmi, if you want to be brave — pray to Hanuman. But whatever you do, you always start your prayers directing them to Ganesh. Anyway, whatever I missed from Krishna’s unclear explanations on Hindu gods, I then had it further explained on my return home by my lovely neighbour, Deepa. Which makes you wonder: why travel half way round the globe, if all the knowledge you require is just round the corner :)
Krishna took us to places I would never thought I had access to. We climbed up the steps to the roof of the Durga Mandir temple from which we had an amazing view onto the worshippers cramming into every corner and decorating every pillar with red ribbons. On the other side there were piles of rubbish just discarded by the wall of this holly place. I struggled to reconcile these two concepts — the Hindu worshippers believe in purifying their souls, yet can ignore the rubbish which rots all around their homes and temples. Is it that the physical world is not so important? This place is so different to what we are used to, it would probably take us ages to even start comprehending it.
As we walked the narrow, oppressive streets of Varanasi the dirty air permeated through to our skin, we were surrounded by poverty, rubbish and abandoned animals. The life of the poorest on show for everyone to see; I saw mothers bathing their naked babies, men urinating against the buildings, people eating, sleeping, no home, no privacy. My head was filling with sad images in front of me, I felt sticky with sweat and an omnipresent sour smell. Krishna was trying to explain that due to the nine day long festivities the city’s poor hadn’t cleaned the streets, hence it was more dirty than usual. Cannot say that we were convinced.
We couldn’t go on the boat trip, as Varanasi suffered lots of rain fall prior to our arrival and the water level was dangerously high. So we just walked down a few famous ghats (large steps leading to the holy water). We still saw a few people swimming there, we witnessed one man having some kind of religious delirious fit overwhelmed, I guess, by some spirits and then fainted on the banks. Krishna took us to one of the cremation places. You could see he was inexperienced as a guide. We had read in our book that we should not follow any crooks promising to take us to a better viewing place, as they want to corner you and demand money. Obviously Krishna was not aware of this scam, so when one of such self confessed “guides” approached us, we refused to follow him, but naïve Krishna introduced the fellow as his “uncle”. What could we do? We had to follow the “uncle” who after taking us up a pile of rubble, dirt and rubbish demanded 500 rupees, which, even thought it is roughly £5, we refused to give. The whole thing ended with us running down the rubble and the toothless opportunist chasing after us.
The cremation place was not the tranquil, respectful clean space to ponder over the purpose of life and death, but more like a bonfire in someone’s backyard with the occasional foot sticking out!
Apparently after the body is almost burnt the fire keepers (for want of a better word) take out the heart (from males) or hip bone (from females) and offer them into the holy river. That guarantees the dead a safe passage to the afterlife without the need to return for another cycle of life on this Earth. Who would like to return to this puddle of tears! We walked along a corridor with many make shift beds, where the old awaited their death near the river, first in line for holly cremation. The whole thing was so alien, so different, that it was difficult to make sense of it.
At first I was shocked, I felt sick, I couldn’t believe how people can live in such squalor, but then I kind of tried to understand. Obviously Varanasi’s purpose is not to be a picture perfect little village. It is a divinely spiritual place where the trappings of this world do not matter.
Aarti
After a short afternoon break from the city Krishna took us for evening prayers by the Ganges. The sunset prayers were magical, even though they couldn’t be celebrated on the ghats but on the large balcony by the river. We stood among the crowd and tried to soak in the atmosphere. Going back to the hotel we saw many processions taking Durga statues to the river — this was the last day of Durga Puja and all the make shift temples were being dismantled.
Sarnath
The following day we wanted to escape the intensity of Varanasi so we took a taxi and spent a relaxing day in the much more serene Sarnath — Buddhist mecca with many temples of different denominations and surrounded by green tranquillity.
The next day our taxi driver taking us back from Varanasi to the airpor, as we were traveling to Mumbai that day, said: “You are leaving Varanasi, but Varanasi will never leave you”. How right he was! This city will never leave me! Never…
