3 days past since I left the holy city and sat down to write about it. I haven’t written because frankly I find it hard to define the experience in words. It was like being a witness to the most extravagant funeral in the world.
The old city has several main boulevards traversing it, choked with traffic. The rest of the city is a labyrinth of alleyways, floored by bricks and formed on each side by three story multi-colored buildings. Navigating the labyrinth successfully brings one to the top of the ghats. The ghats are grand staircases of various sized steps and landings that lead down to the
At night, flaming corpses are visible up and down the river. Chanting and drums can be heard until sunup, when the ghats lie dormant for a few short hours. Those that cannot afford to be cremated this way yet still feel they must join the Ganges in order to reach a higher spiritual plane have their remains bound by rocks at the feet and are plunged into the center of the river. This fact, combined with the copious amounts of human waste that flow through the sewers (really open air 2 foot deep gutters that notoriously overflow) and into the river make the prospect of submerging oneself unthinkable, except to the Hindu. Perhaps the fact that they still bathe is a sign of their devotion to spirituality. Whatever it may be it significantly adds to the weight this place puts on the mind.
On the last day of my stay, I jumped on the back of a motorcycle owned by one of the employees of the guesthouse I was staying at. He took me on a tour of the local temples (including the site of Buddha’s first sermon). As always, though I thoroughly enjoyed the temples, the site of the city and everyday Indian life were the most intriguing. Markets, taxis, bicycles, and rickshaws in amazing amounts flew by, careening in all directions. I’d grown accustomed to this Indian day to day. What Varanasi added to the mix was the occasional funeral party in ceremonial garb, carrying the corpse in a sheet on their shoulders, or say…a man in a loin cloth, covered in white powder, with red and orange paint on his face, praying and gyrating down the street.
The Taj Mahal, the magnificent “teardrop of love in a pool of eternity”, or some such… It IS quite remarkable, especially in comparison to the country in which it resides. The sheer whiteness, the clean purity is shocking enough, let alone the size and intricacy.
Awakening at dawn in
My travel companion, Ethan, arrived in
Ethan and I traveled to the center of the city to see what there was to see, it didn’t appear to be much, and we decided to return to our hotel not long after dark. The man driving the rickshaw we hailed spoke good English and didn’t assault us with offers of other, less respectable goods and services as other drivers had. He engaged us in conversation and had us laughing. He asked if we liked beer…”of course.” Whiskey? “Sometimes, but we prefer beer.” “Good, good.” He replied “Whiskey is risky and makes you chiskey!” Chiskey? Apparently this is the Hindi word for sleepy. We agreed to a stop off for a beer and offered to buy him one. He told us some of his family history. His family lives in a slum in
Ethan and I had full intentions on taking Samir up on his offer, but I was struck by a particularly stomach churning case of Delhi-belly that kept me up all night. I dared not stray too far from my hotel room bathroom the whole next day. At
KANDA
Inexplicably happy to extract ourselves from the crowded bus, Ethan and I walked down the dirt road from the Kanda market, down into the valley, looking for my contact, Jeevan Verma. The Kanda valley descends from its ridgeline in terraced stair step fields and clusters of small homes. Irrigation channels zig zag out from the streams to feed the thirsty wheat crop. Small soapstone excavation areas shine white on the green landscape and men can be seen working the pits, pulling stone from the earth to shore up terraces and build houses. The ridges outlines and defining the valley are thick with pine trees. They look like white pine with their wispy needles but the fascicle bunches are grouped in balls on the limbs, giving the trees a clustered look, almost like grapes. Banana trees spot the valley, giving it a tropical feel in spots. Monkeys are around, though not in the amounts seen in the plains. Certainly present, painting the classic Indian picture, are the sarees. From this elevated distance, they flutter gently as the forms beneath them glide over their work. The light catches the patterns differently, expressing all facets of this most feminine garment. I love to become absorbed by their presence in numbers. Too much to see all at once, and not as impressive when viewed alone, their sight must be inhaled, aspirated…perhaps by the pores of the skin or maybe the third eye humans have that opens when we stare at the ocean long enough. In this Himalayan setting, it is purely poetic…Breath, see, blink, and walk on…
We were escorted to Jeevan’s house by two young boys on their way home from school. Jeevan’s house stands on the mountainside, 1/3 of the way down to the valley floor with magnificent, sweeping views of the Kanda valley. His family stays on the second floor of the house, guests on the ground floor. The kitchen and stable for the cows are apart from the main house. Jeevan is a very amiable, talkative man with obvious energy. He speaks quickly and doubles up many words. “Yes, yes! Slowly, slowly!” etc. His kids and grandkids were quick to bring us tea and the little ones engaged us in games. We were shown our room, bare, except for 2 simple beds (cotton pad over plywood) and straw mats on the floor. The rest of the house is furnished relatively the same. We met our only neighbors in the guesthouse, an Australian / Canadian couple and they filled us in on the work they’d been doing…making concrete bricks from local river sand to build another water tank. Jeevan took us on a quick tour of his place and the adjacent community center project down the hill. The building was only half complete, still lacking its second story and roof…the roof we need in order to install the solar panels for the center’s lighting system.
After talking with Jeevan at length about our project goals, Ethan and I talked privately about the curveballs being thrown at us and how to handle them. One issue was the incomplete community center. Second, locations for the solar paneled street lights. Jeevan wants some placed on the path in between the community center and his village area (i.e. his house) but, we’re not sure that is the best use of one of the lights. Third, selecting houses to receive the in-house lighting systems based upon appropriate criteria. At the core of our dilemma was trying to feel out Jeevan. What are HIS goals, what are HIS motivations?
Admittedly, looking around the beautiful Kanda valley, Ethan and I wonder if our time and our donators’ money would be best put to use here. After traveling through so many disastrously impoverished areas in
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