Varanasi

I have been in Varanasi over four weeks now and can confidently say it feels like one of those special places I could easily make and happily call; my home. Varanasi is a tangled web of little streets and alleyways forming a type of maze of confusion for those not familiar with the place, and equally a maze of confusion for those familiar with the place. The spaghetti street planning could only be possible in Varanasi, where my hourly walks take up to three hours; following a series of wrong turns, despite walking most of the streets regularly and having my ‘man sense of direction’. If you’re not squeezing past cows, you’re dodging their shit, and you can’t just avoid the dead bodies by avoiding the burning ghats; as the Pandas, the people who deal with the dead, come rushing down the street at full pelt carrying dead bodies on stretchers chanting as they go. The speed they move endangers your life to the point were I think they’re just trying to drum up a little extra business for themselves in the hope you won’t jump out the way in time. In Varanasi, more than any other place in India I’ve been, it is advisable to just say ‘yes’, or stop for that conversation as you can be sure it’ll be interesting or at the very least lead to something amusing. Varanasi makes no sense if you try and explain it, and I am struggle to even think how I can do it justice with mere words. You have to experience this place to understand it, and then to experience it you have to embrace it.

For those who don’t know; Varanasi was created by Shiva; the God of creation and destruction, and who is like the Godfather of Indian gods, all one million and three of them. Varanasi is to the best of my knowledge the most spiritual site of the Hindu religion, although I could be wrong, and if you die within a certain radius of the Ganga, India’s most spiritual river, in the vicinity of Varanasi; you achieve instant moksha, which is emancipation from the physical body after death and therefore onto better things, thus saving you the toil of having to go through another tedious life of enlightenment hunting. It is known as the place of rebirth or of death. People come here to die, or have their bodies sent here after death to be cremated on the pyres and the ashes scattered in the water. It is also, although I’m not completely sure I have been witness to it, a common sight to see dead bodies floating down stream, as not everyone can afford to be cremated, or even fully created, and being dumped in the river is at least the next best thing. The rebirth refers to dunking yourself in the river and having all your sins washed away. Apparently it is that easy, but as I’ve already mentioned the river is full of death, some burnt some not, raw sewage from the town and at least five different kinds of industrial waste, not to mention all the other rubbish collected en-route from it’s source and the addition of the Yamuna river which flows into it at Allahabad having gone through Delhi beforehand; a few ‘Hail Marys’ is probably a safer option.

I haven’t mentioned what I got up to in Rishikesh yet, and as it was nearly two months ago I probably won’t, but it’s further up river and I washed my sins away there instead, so don’t really feel obliged to risk my health here. I mentioned this to a baba, who also read my palm and astrology, all is well nothing to worry about, and he said it’s all in the mind and it’s that faith and belief which allows people to drink the water. That’s great for them, my weak western immune system on the other hand will need a little more than belief to go on I think. Positive thought can only get you so far and although I have full faith in Mother India; she probably has her hands full with over a billion Indians needlessly and constantly risking their own lives day after day to have time to deal with another bloody tourist trying to do like the locals do.

 As a result of all this rebirth and death there is a powerful energy to the place. It may have been here first and be the reason for Varanasi’s construction, or as a result of Varanasi, but I doubt I’ll ever fully know. I felt the same about India when I originally arrived and when I re-entered having gone up to Sikkim, but this energy is much more than that; it’s like a concentrated India, and maybe that’s why they say Varanasi is like India in miniature. Varanasi is an intense version of an already intense place, and it is understandable why it’s not to everyone’s liking. Me, well I’ve fully embraced the place, I love it and I’m absolutely exhausted as a result.

Despite the crazy nature I’m not full of big ridiculous stories, or at least ones I can remember, more just little things which amused me or freaked me out at the time. For instance; I fulfilled some morbid curiosity by discovering flesh melts when set alight, and smells like barbeque. I was suitably freaked out by these discoveries that I vowed never to return to a burning ghat again. On my second visit, while in a particularly small and cramped area of the ghat, I had a dead body carried so close that despite my best efforts to get as far away as possible, I was still in what I like to call ‘smelling distance’; so close that you find yourself having dead body Ganga water dripping on you. I may have at this point been either purified or had some dead persons sins added to my own but I didn’t hang around long enough to find out and have not returned, and will not be returning.

There have been some little things while going on my walks. I watched two bulls fighting in the middle of a busy road; oblivious to the chaos ensuing around them, as drivers either swerved at high speeds to avoid them or had to use their brakes for the first time. The whole incident just made me laugh, similar to the time I was listening very intently to the boy in the internet shop complain about Israeli’s and a big funny looking goat just walks past the door, taking the seriousness out of the conversation, for me at least. It’s the little things in India.

I watched a chicken being executed. A quick slice of the throat, the executioner holds it in place with his feet until it twitches it’s last; he then clips the wings before decapitating it and then rips the skin and feathers off in one like he’s peeling off a leotard. After this I left so can’t say what happened next unfortunately. I continued my walk down the high street and amused myself with the idea of what would happen if this scene were repeated in full view on a British high street in the middle of the afternoon. The council would be straight in there; followed by someone suing them for the trauma they suffered by discovering that that’s what their chicken nuggets started out life like. Little Jonny was never quite the same after discovering the realities of eating meat. KFC spend millions on a new PR campaign as word spreads ‘chicken’ is an animal and not just some chewy white stuff you put tomato sauce on. And Paul McCartney writes a song about it. Those were my thoughts and they amused me at the time.

I was kicked out of my first Indian wedding. Unfortunately the men and women were separated so not for anything dramatically romantic as I would have liked; just having gate crashed and then been fed we were asked very politely to leave. A bit of an anti-climax to be honest, but I can at least tick being kicked out of a wedding off the list and I can’t complain about the free and tasty food I got out of it. And finally, I saw a family of monkeys crossing the street. It was all very funny. The biggest went first to test how safe it would be. Head down as fast as he could weaving in and out of the traffic, his life flashing before his eyes as they say. This was followed by an angry encounter with the man who owned the jeep he used to jump from onto a roof; the man in full-on comedy style turning and running away in fear despite initiating the whole thing, much to my vocal amusement which I don’t feel was entirely appreciated. A few minutes later the entire family of fifteen followed him and his exact route, much to my amusement and the man who owned the trampoline jeep’s horror. This was another time in which a few unfortunate Indians discovered what use the other peddle had and a few fat people almost fell out of their rickshaws. These may have all been ‘one of those times you had to be there’ but I thoroughly enjoyed them at the time and they put a smile on my face.

It wouldn’t be India of course without a little suffering. It’s been hot in a humid way and the power cuts constantly; turning my room into a stuffy box without the use of the fan. As the month has gone on I’ve been a little more tired each day and am now fully exhausted. India is intense but as I’ve already said Varanasi is an intense version of India and it’s taken it out of me. I thoroughly love Varanasi and will return, but I am probably ready to move on, I just can’t quite bring myself to do it. The problem is; to leave Varanasi means to leave India and next stop Nepal, so not all that bad, but not quite the same

 Some photo's with no relevance to anything I have just been talking about except that they're of Varanasi

An Evening Puja

Sunrise over the Ganga

Boats, Temples and Soul Cleansing Water

A Little Rebirth

It’s not that I’ve lost the urge to write, or lost the inspiration to come up with ideas, and it’s not that I’ve just become idle, but I’ve not been overly interested in writing another piece on here for these last few weeks, and as a result, well I guess I just haven’t. I am a believer though that if you leave something too long it becomes more difficult to get back into doing it again; the whole falling off a bike thing to a degree you could say, it’s also a handy way of killing time while my washing soaks.

Much has happened these last 3-4 weeks. I’ll go into more detail on it when I write up India as a whole but I’ll throw in a few things now. The last piece I wrote was from beautifully picturesque and cool Sikkim, just what I needed after the sweltering suffering of Calcutta; so I spent only four days there before moving onto swelteringly hot Bodhgaya. Now Bodhgaya is a special place, not only for Buddhists; as it’s the place Gautam Siddhartha experienced enlightenment under a tree and became The Buddha, but for future Williamists too, as it’s the place I was reborn. I did say a great deal had happened.

When I wrote the last piece, all I said was true, and everything still stands, but it was a slightly defiant happiness I was feeling, I was still suffering slightly. In Bodhgaya though, with the heat, I could feel myself slipping back down the same path as in Calcutta but this time with no illness as an excuse. To prevent this, and to regain a little fitness after the feebleness lying down for three weeks results in, I decided to get fit. I started with going for walks for at least an hour everyday, which I discovered is actually a great way to explore a place, I got back into my yoga and perish the thought; enjoyed it and still am, and I even found myself doing some doing some push-ups of all things, evidently desperate times. At that point I was anorexically emaciated and I needed to emancipate myself from this feeble skin and bones I had become, and this I saw as the only way. It was not easy and took much effort to do any of this but now three weeks later I’m finding it much easier and am actually enjoying all these things, I’ve even found a stone to lift like a weight, and as I’m now in Varanasi; the walks are one of my favourite times of the day, often lasting up to three hours as I bear witness to the crazy.

I also had to push myself through that mental suffering in Bodhgaya too. Not only the part trying to be idle, but the part which was going a little insane from the heat and the bit which was still not completely over the tired miserable emotions previously felt. With the insanity issue I just decided not to worrying and thoroughly embraced it, which was great fun, and this also helped in me regaining the ‘love’ which I thought I had lost. I saw that I had been fighting India the previous month, and it had led to my suffering, but I fully embraced it just like I did at first and I remembered what it was I loved about the place, myself and life; a good thing to remember I like to think.

So there I was in Bodhgaya. I was back on the road to recovery of both body and mind; I really felt alive again, like I had been reborn. And then I got the urge to move. It was weird how it happened, it coincided with the new moon, and this I assure you was not intentional. On the last day of the previous moon cycle I suddenly got the urge it was time to move on, and the following day on the new moon I woke up and realised that while the body may have still been in Bodhgaya, the heart and mind no longer was. I paid up, said goodbye to some police officers of all people who had befriended me, fed me and let me hold their guns, and went straight to the train station; next stop Varanasi and the next phase of my new life. Two weeks later and I’m further from describing this place than I was when I arrived, but I can feel it, and it feels good.