Walking Benares

Saturday August 3

All is well in Varanasi.  We needed five people to guide us through the city of 3 million last night so that we didn't get lost.  That was the real reason for a "full fleet " of program directors.  This holy city is either a bit tame in the modern era, or we are just used to India.  Actually I know that it is the former.  Varanasi today is quite different from the city of a previous generation or too.

Varanasi is one of the oldest cities in the world.  It's known history is at least 3500 years old. It is situated on the north bank of the Ganges river.  It is here that the Ganges takes a pivotal turn for seven kilometers returning north toward its source of origin in the Himalayas.  This is auspicious.  When you stand on its shores you look straight across the river to the east and directly behind you to the west.  Hindu's believe the city is eternal.  Babies are brought here to be blessed and people "come home" to the river to die and then to be reborn.

People also bathe in the river.  Normally that means they use a stairway down to the river.  These stairways are known as ghats.  I thought there were only one or two in Varanasi before I came here, but there must be at least a hundred ghats.  Where are the ghats.  You won't see them in my photos because the mother river is over her banks, the highest waters since 2001.  We've viewed the Ganges from rooftops.  We were supposed to have a boat ride on the river, but the government shut down all boats.  No one is on the river or in the river at this point.  The river is murky and the currents look very powerful.

Last night we did a tour we've labeled The Sweat and Cow Pie Tour of Benares (Varanasi).  There are a lot of cows here.  We walked from 3:00 p.m. Until 8:00 p.m. down streets and alleyways last night and again for three hours this morning at dawn. Some of the alleyways were just about six feet wide.  Imagine being in them with foot traffic going both ways, motorcycles, bicycles, carts as wide as the alley itself, a rat or two, some psycho Macaques and the occasional bull.  You almost have Varanasi in your mind.  Now....slosh......you just stepped in a nice juicy cow pie.  Turn in to the left here.  Oh, you are in someone's eight by eight foot house.  No worries, the temple or Mughal mosque is just right here.  Take off your shoes.....

Sacred Varanasi, it is powerful.  We visited some residential homes for the sick and dying.  This means stone buildings with sparse furnishings, a communal water spigot and a place for a gas cooking stove.  A family has brought a loved one to die.  We are invited in.  A small withered woman lies on a cot in the twilight, looking at us in a kind and peaceful way.  She is prepared and ready to depart.  Her husband is grieving.  His face falls into his hands and tears slide silently down his cheeks.  The daughter looks tired.  Her eyes are stressed.  They wait.  

This is the hospice of India.  It is not the persons own home.  It is his or her spiritual home and probably the home where ones ancestors also came to die.  After death the bodies are cremated on special funerary pyres.  In the past the widow was expected to jump into the fire to travel with her departed husband on his journey to rebirth,  that is illegal today.  Many things are illegal here that are still practiced.  This suicide at least, would not be common and would certainly not happen at Varanasi.  

After a death Hindu rituals take place and the ashes are returned to the river.  If you are poor or perhaps stingy, you cannot afford cremation.  Instead you weight your family members body down with rocks and release it in the river for its journey.  This practice has been illegal since 1990, but it's one of those laws good for health and ecology and not one monitored carefully.  You might see a bloated body pop up now and then.  We saw one that offered taxi service to several crows. 

Death and dying in modern India is taking new directions.  The fourth stage in a Hindu's journey is to prepare to depart.  Girish says that in the past people would have a small suitcase packed for decades that contained the ritual materials for after death.  When they were ready they would leave their family, take their case and go to the river or the mountains to complete their life journey.  Now people aren't as interested in preparing. The modern world is stimulating and distracting.  People want to stay at home.  Sadly now when some depart there home it is after an argument with family members who are tired of taking care of them.  They leave unprepared to depart, but full of heartache and pain.  Some of the beauty of historic practices has gone.

The Ganges is remarkable and this journey to it's sacred banks is one that has been well worth taking.

Asides: We thought the alleys were just narrow.  "No" says Girish, building practices are unrestricted and people just keeping building out and out until the space is ridiculously small.  Garbage, no sewage or sanitation, potholes in the roads, no money?  "Grrrrr" said Girish, there is money and no government will.  He says people rise up, the government makes promises and nothing comes of it.  The system is corrupt. Government leaders live well and don't feel motivated to improve things.  Maybe it will begin to improve in ten years.....fifty.....a millennia:). It appears the Indian middle class is VERY frustrated with this.

  

Begging....no more or no less here than we have seen elsewhere.  Sometimes begging looks like a past-time.  You will see a line of women here for instance squatting and holding out tin plates for alms.  As soon as people pass they resume exchanging their stories of the day.  This is really more of a tourist city today.  Twenty years ago it was apparently not this way.