edit: forgot to mention, Kushinagar and new Varanasi pics are up. Also, this is the 100th post on this blog. How did THAT happen?
Upon returning from Nepal I ticked off the last stop on my tour of the great Buddhist pilgrimages of India, the village of Kushinagar, where the Buddha died.
Even for a Buddhist pilgrimage site in a country that is less than 1% Buddhist, Kushinagar is so sleepy it's almost sad. It's located in a poor, rural part of Uttar Pradesh not far from the Bihar border and is little more than a wheat-farming village with a handful of incongruous temples along one of the roads. Even the monasteries sort of blend in, the ones from the poorer Buddhist countries being indistinguishable from your standard village brick-piles save for the fact that their cheaply-painted murals offer fortune-cookie tips to spiritual enlightenment rather than competing manufacturers of steel rods. In the center of town are the excavated ruins of old Kushinagar, which aren't much to look at now, and in the center of these is the new-ish Mahaparinirvana Temple. This temple allegedly marks the precise spot where Buddha died and achieved the ultimate Nirvana. It's an odd space-ship'y building blending the ancient design with a bit too much modernism. Inside is an enormous gold-covered statue of the Buddha lying serenely on his deathbed, a scene so inspirational it is the one place I have actually observed Hindu people being silent. I saw it firsthand. This is the Indian equivalent of sending a swirling, screeching jar of distilled ectoplasm to the home addresses of the Nobel committee. Aside from the statue, however, the interior of this most important temple is truly hideous. It has polished stone floors, but halfway up the walls become plain, unpainted concrete, and you can see the rusty ventilation fans hanging in the upper windows. It looks like the lobby of a deceptive budget hotel in New Delhi with a massive ancient treasure ready to disappear into a shipping container somewhere.
Beyond the temple and a row of monasteries one could mistake for hardware stores there is basically just a lot of rice and wheat. I found myself on a bit of a stroll through the "village", which was mostly unfinished boundary-walls and stacked blocks of cow-dung fuel next to thatched huts. After about fifteen minutes of surprising quiet in which I saw more ditch-lounging buffaloes than people, I finally found what I was looking for: the ruins of the huge ancient stupa erected on the site where Buddha was cremated. Sure enough, it's still there, in vaguely stupa form, in a blissfully quiet little lawn dotted with palm trees, with nothing but empty fields stretching in every direction. It was fabulous.
I was making my way south from Nepal to Madhya Pradesh, because I hate myself. More about M.P. and Ghostface Buddha's ingrained masochism* later, but the point is I found it convenient to stop in Varanasi as I headed south. *nobody's ever loved me
I arrived in Varanasi six months to the day from my previous sojourn here, and some things have certainly changed. The city seems strangely empty in comparison, perhaps because it is not now the peak of one of India's largest festivals, or perhaps because I am now irredeemably accustomed to suffocating multitudes. The Ganges river, after a problematically dry winter and spring, has fallen many feet, and it is now possible to actually walk up to the door of the sunken temple just off of Scindia Ghat. I would have taken a peek inside the small chamber that is normally immersed in the sacred waters, but feared that it would merely lead me down into a vast lower temple where I would have to negotiate an arcane system of traps dependent on magically-changing water levels and playing wind instruments. On the other hand, the narrow alleys of the old city surely remain the world's most dangerous bottlenecks of cow-shittery. The more things change the more they stay the same.
I went wandering about the alleys again, this time with bolder explorations in mind. As I twisted through the confounding maze of alleys, I couldn't help but notice the heavily-armed platoons of paramilitary police at every corner, and got the strange feeling of being under some sort of quarantine. Then it all made sense...
Varanasi is plagued by zombies.
Think about it: how else to explain the massive paramilitary deployment, the unspoken nocturnal curfew, the photography prohibitions, the insistence upon burning all bodies immediately upon death? The Vedas were telling no mere parable when they declared that Varanasi is "ungoverned by the Lord of Death"! So many pieces fall together. Why are there so many raving holy men seeking nothing but a liberation from further "lives"? Why are the inhabitants of the city so compulsively vegetarian? You would be too if the consumption of flesh brought horrific reminders of the insatiable undead! And why else is there such a profusion of arcane rituals if not to root out zombies incapable of following through with the complex motions? Why are so many buffaloes necessary, if not as mounts for the cow-headed, buffalo-riding Death god Yama? And is it mere coincidence that the interminable ringing of bells - a virtual homing beacon of living worshipers- takes place on elevated platforms or behind closely guarded doors? I think not. And do the authorities think that a mere zombie plague excuses them from clearing the streets of cow shit? OVER MY DEAD BODY
Like it or not, I was not given a chance to do battle with the living dead as I was confined by the curfew. Slipping through the alleys just before lockdown I had a chance at least to test my reflexes, and almost took off the head of an elderly woman who reached with a whispered groan towards my arm from a dark recess in the street. A city where people go to die can be a creepy place.
Ultimately, the greatest threat to my well-being came from others among the living, and as usual, from myself. I was poking about alleys as before, and found myself at an intriguing-looking Hindu temple, and decided to peek inside. I discovered later that it was a semi-underground super-hardcore orthodox temple, one of those that had been established precisely as a spiteful answer to the other temples of Varanasi which were now letting the likes of the lowest castes into their hallowed grounds, and one of the last places it would be wise for me to be. What I discovered then, however, was that this foreigner was clearly not wanted, an insinuation made less than subtly by an angry, screaming mob dragging me into the streets by my shirt. Shit, as they say, got real. I was subjected to a rapid barrage of half-shouted, half-spat, somewhat rhetorical questions like "DO YOU RESPECT RELIGION?" and "WHY DO YOU BRING YOUR DIRT HERE?" I walked a tightrope of apology and defiance, spouting as much semi-relevant Hindu theology as I could muster to save my ass, apologizing profusely, wriggling free of my immediate assailants, and stalwartly refusing to go into the darkened temple offices to "see the high priests for a discussion." Instead I managed to talk so much I drew away a handful of English-speaking mob members and carefully increased my distance from the furious rabble until I backed around a corner within sight of a police patrol. The police and the small detachment from the mob both hesitated; clearly the mob knew there could be trouble and didn't know what to do, and the police were waiting for an indication from the mob to see whether I should be hauled away for a discussion with them instead. In the awkward no-man's land I made another burst of quick apologies, some praises to the various Almighties, and passed off about $11 dollars in bribe before quickly spinning off into a warren of lanes leading to the waterfront.
The moral of the story? Conservative clergymen are assholes. I'll take the zombies any day. At least if you disintegrate their heads you don't have to perform ten thousand fire-stake penances or take a basket of 108 conch shells on a pilgrimage to the fucking moon. Amen.
Showing posts with label Varanasi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Varanasi. Show all posts
Apr 18, 2010
Oct 19, 2009
Happy Diwali, G's
I have left Varanasi and yet again my war against Indian livestock has moved to new soil. While waiting in line to get a train ticket the hell out of Faizabad (more on that later), I found myself in a typically dense line in a small cage-like enclosure they see fit to call the reservations office. About two hours into this almost meditative excercise in monotony,a great yelp erupted from the crowd and people began fleeing from their covetously guarded positions in line. I tried to discern the source of the commotion, and it became quite obvious. Not more than two feet behind me was a gigantic bull, which had found its way indoors and around through the door of the reservations office, and was determined to force its way through the mass of cueing customers. The customers wisely chose not to resist. Having caused such a stir, the longhorned monster was quite content to sit in the corner of the office and swat flies with its tail. Always,fucking cows.
Diwali is a month of good luck and festivals. At its climax is a Festival of Lights, which includes formal rituals and more importantly, fireworks. As such the occasion is much loved by Indian children who spend at least a week prior randomly detonating firecrackers, and is equally despised by Indian monkeys, who have no idea what's coming. There is no creature capable of greater athleticism than an urban monkey fleeing a cataclysm. From a Varanasi rooftop I was treated to a 360-degree panorama of colorful explosions that went on for hours. Indian fireworks are spectacularly cheap and unsafe, so the locals amass sizeable arsenals which they launch gleefully well into the night. There is an added element of excitement as projectiles may misfire in any direction at any moment, periodically sending volatile mixtures of gunpowder and chemically-treated birdshit rocketing ever so gracefully into, say, a third-storey balcony.
The kids, whose enchantment with fireworks knows no bounds, buy firecrackers by the sackful. They have also discovered that the safest and most convenient way to light them is by standing them upright in a cow turd. This is usually fine, until someone misjudges the potency of the explosive and the situation becomes utterly catastrophic, most of all for the children themselves who take no heed of the great distances being rapidly covered by their elders, and are surprisingly slothful for people who know they've just set a bomb in a pile of wet shit. Serves them right.
My last day in Varanasi tied up a lot of loose ends. I finally bought some clothes I've been pretending to waffle on for days to score a better discount. I attended a fire ceremony at the ghats and paid my respects to my favorite saddhus.
I met a guy who calls himself a Truth Speaker, who took me on a tour of the Varanasi underworld. He showed me where the false holy men lurk to count the money they begged from naive pilgrims and buy opium, the stair-alley where a guru was murdered for speaking out against the desecration of sacred river fisheries, and past the boat where a prostitute he particulatly disliked ("nobody likes this family" he alleged) lures customers for illicit contacts on the holy river. Though I had suspected much of what he told me I was glad to see a side of the city most of the tourists don't. Finally he took me into the actual underworld of the city, where an ancient shrine to Vishnu was concealed 25 feet underground through a twisting passage hidden in an alley I doubt I could ever find again.
I'm back on the road. Mo' trains, mo' towns, mo' fireworks at 3am. Farewells can be bittersweet. Some can be sweet. I ran into my shoulder-fondling freakshow one last time. Upon telling him of my immenent departure I saw the last glimmer of hope fade from his eyes as he ungrasped my hostage hands and dissolved into mist, whispering"no ten rupees..." . Then he was gone.
Diwali is a month of good luck and festivals. At its climax is a Festival of Lights, which includes formal rituals and more importantly, fireworks. As such the occasion is much loved by Indian children who spend at least a week prior randomly detonating firecrackers, and is equally despised by Indian monkeys, who have no idea what's coming. There is no creature capable of greater athleticism than an urban monkey fleeing a cataclysm. From a Varanasi rooftop I was treated to a 360-degree panorama of colorful explosions that went on for hours. Indian fireworks are spectacularly cheap and unsafe, so the locals amass sizeable arsenals which they launch gleefully well into the night. There is an added element of excitement as projectiles may misfire in any direction at any moment, periodically sending volatile mixtures of gunpowder and chemically-treated birdshit rocketing ever so gracefully into, say, a third-storey balcony.
The kids, whose enchantment with fireworks knows no bounds, buy firecrackers by the sackful. They have also discovered that the safest and most convenient way to light them is by standing them upright in a cow turd. This is usually fine, until someone misjudges the potency of the explosive and the situation becomes utterly catastrophic, most of all for the children themselves who take no heed of the great distances being rapidly covered by their elders, and are surprisingly slothful for people who know they've just set a bomb in a pile of wet shit. Serves them right.
My last day in Varanasi tied up a lot of loose ends. I finally bought some clothes I've been pretending to waffle on for days to score a better discount. I attended a fire ceremony at the ghats and paid my respects to my favorite saddhus.
I met a guy who calls himself a Truth Speaker, who took me on a tour of the Varanasi underworld. He showed me where the false holy men lurk to count the money they begged from naive pilgrims and buy opium, the stair-alley where a guru was murdered for speaking out against the desecration of sacred river fisheries, and past the boat where a prostitute he particulatly disliked ("nobody likes this family" he alleged) lures customers for illicit contacts on the holy river. Though I had suspected much of what he told me I was glad to see a side of the city most of the tourists don't. Finally he took me into the actual underworld of the city, where an ancient shrine to Vishnu was concealed 25 feet underground through a twisting passage hidden in an alley I doubt I could ever find again.
I'm back on the road. Mo' trains, mo' towns, mo' fireworks at 3am. Farewells can be bittersweet. Some can be sweet. I ran into my shoulder-fondling freakshow one last time. Upon telling him of my immenent departure I saw the last glimmer of hope fade from his eyes as he ungrasped my hostage hands and dissolved into mist, whispering
Oct 16, 2009
This Shit Is Banaras
One of the reasons for my lengthy stay in Varanasi was to ensure that I celebrated the day of my birth in a place I knew not to be a complete craphole. Determined to make a special occasion rather than just stroll along the ghats for hours yet again, I looked for some way to mark the day in my memory. Inspired by the sight of bathing saddhus and swimmers, I decided to take a ceremonial plunge into the Ganges.
This was an exceptionally poor idea.
Though I intended to use the experience to take in my surroundings and allow the reality of my awesome new life to sink in, the only things that sank in were a plethora of industrial byproducts, and the various forms of waste deposited by the approximately 200 million people upstream. I have also been reminded that in Varanasi alone about 100 corpses are dumped in the river a day. Fantastic.
I freely admit that I am no stranger to vomiting on my birthday, but I would say that it is preferable to achieve this via foolishly dedicated binge-drinking than it is to do so as the result of tropical diseases. I spent much of the rest of the day having an adventure in plumbing, as Indian toilets (a bizarre and fascinating topic on their own) are even more uncomfortable and degrading to puke into than Western ones. At least they have knee pads. Fortunately the effects of this folly were short-lived and after a lengthy rest I was well by the next day.
I am being stalked by a masseur. There are countless men at the ghats offering massages and using the "Varanasi handshake" to trap unsuspecting tourists into an experience with their less-than-supple hands. One of these men follows me great distances every day, argues with me, frequently puts his hands on my face, and has numerous times sneaked up behind me and started rubbing my shoulders. Today I snapped at one such intrusion after he had trailed me for about 500 meters and lashed out with a would-be devastating insult, only to be reminded that my razor tongue only limply wiggles when deployed on an Indian audience. "Ten rupees sir, only ten rupees", his incessant refrain echoed as he grasped me by the cheeks. "I wouldn't give you ten rupees if your oldest daughter was massaging my dick", I shot back. "...Only ten rupees sir. Good massage."
I suck at India.
There is a dog - Cerberus is his name - that lives below my window. He is the single most evil-spirited animal that I ever hope to encounter. His hateful, dragon-like growls haunt my sleep and I have many times awoken to the yelping of dogs and puppies he has bitten or the thundering hooves of tooth-scarred cows rounding the corner. Were I not locked in here every night I would grease my chest, dig the leotard out of my backpack, put on my lucha libre mask, go outside and knock that fucker's teeth out with a bar stool.
I met a silk wholesaler today and for journalistic reasons (Ghostface gotta get paid) visited his factory to take notes on the weaving and dyeing process. All you need to know is that the scent of each color is capable of producing a subtly different form of nausea, and that the presence of that much dye is enough to make you feel like your eyes are going to bleed, and not just because the designs are way too garish for autumn.
Much more pleasant was my half-planned run-in with my old homie the buffalo herder. "I wait for you," he said "take one pole." Sweet God, yes.
With the neophyte zeal of a fraternity pledge I joined in herding his buffalo out of the Ganges and up the massive steps to the city streets, slapping buffalo belly and waving my stick all the way. Dozens of people stopped and stared , but I've come to accept that as the price of doing anything really fun in India. Maybe it's because they're so unused to seeing a member of the tourist hordes give up their dignified distance and actually immerse themselves in the day-to-day of common Indian life, or maybe it was because a guy in royal blue Indian pajama trousers and a Serbian t-shirt was loudly slapping a herd of buffalo.
Finally I ran into my saddhu friend. This guy is an old man who just spent 45 days walking barefoot from Delhi to Varanasi with nothing but an orange robe and a sack of body pigments. We sat down and in very stilted English talked for some time about the meaning of love. After offering a great many romantic tips (Do not let her father see your filthy toes; shop at her parents' store and casually flash wads of cash), he concluded "What is good? One wife, whole life." I swear, somewhere in India is a massive academy that instructs people in the English language solely in rhyming verse. "Burning is learning, cremation education". Even people with only the slightest English know at least half a dozen random couplets. I'm going to donate a truckload of Snoop Dogg CD's to this academy and blow India's mind.
This was an exceptionally poor idea.
Though I intended to use the experience to take in my surroundings and allow the reality of my awesome new life to sink in, the only things that sank in were a plethora of industrial byproducts, and the various forms of waste deposited by the approximately 200 million people upstream. I have also been reminded that in Varanasi alone about 100 corpses are dumped in the river a day. Fantastic.
I freely admit that I am no stranger to vomiting on my birthday, but I would say that it is preferable to achieve this via foolishly dedicated binge-drinking than it is to do so as the result of tropical diseases. I spent much of the rest of the day having an adventure in plumbing, as Indian toilets (a bizarre and fascinating topic on their own) are even more uncomfortable and degrading to puke into than Western ones. At least they have knee pads. Fortunately the effects of this folly were short-lived and after a lengthy rest I was well by the next day.
I am being stalked by a masseur. There are countless men at the ghats offering massages and using the "Varanasi handshake" to trap unsuspecting tourists into an experience with their less-than-supple hands. One of these men follows me great distances every day, argues with me, frequently puts his hands on my face, and has numerous times sneaked up behind me and started rubbing my shoulders. Today I snapped at one such intrusion after he had trailed me for about 500 meters and lashed out with a would-be devastating insult, only to be reminded that my razor tongue only limply wiggles when deployed on an Indian audience. "Ten rupees sir, only ten rupees", his incessant refrain echoed as he grasped me by the cheeks. "I wouldn't give you ten rupees if your oldest daughter was massaging my dick", I shot back. "...Only ten rupees sir. Good massage."
I suck at India.
There is a dog - Cerberus is his name - that lives below my window. He is the single most evil-spirited animal that I ever hope to encounter. His hateful, dragon-like growls haunt my sleep and I have many times awoken to the yelping of dogs and puppies he has bitten or the thundering hooves of tooth-scarred cows rounding the corner. Were I not locked in here every night I would grease my chest, dig the leotard out of my backpack, put on my lucha libre mask, go outside and knock that fucker's teeth out with a bar stool.
I met a silk wholesaler today and for journalistic reasons (Ghostface gotta get paid) visited his factory to take notes on the weaving and dyeing process. All you need to know is that the scent of each color is capable of producing a subtly different form of nausea, and that the presence of that much dye is enough to make you feel like your eyes are going to bleed, and not just because the designs are way too garish for autumn.
Much more pleasant was my half-planned run-in with my old homie the buffalo herder. "I wait for you," he said "take one pole." Sweet God, yes.
With the neophyte zeal of a fraternity pledge I joined in herding his buffalo out of the Ganges and up the massive steps to the city streets, slapping buffalo belly and waving my stick all the way. Dozens of people stopped and stared , but I've come to accept that as the price of doing anything really fun in India. Maybe it's because they're so unused to seeing a member of the tourist hordes give up their dignified distance and actually immerse themselves in the day-to-day of common Indian life, or maybe it was because a guy in royal blue Indian pajama trousers and a Serbian t-shirt was loudly slapping a herd of buffalo.
Finally I ran into my saddhu friend. This guy is an old man who just spent 45 days walking barefoot from Delhi to Varanasi with nothing but an orange robe and a sack of body pigments. We sat down and in very stilted English talked for some time about the meaning of love. After offering a great many romantic tips (Do not let her father see your filthy toes; shop at her parents' store and casually flash wads of cash), he concluded "What is good? One wife, whole life." I swear, somewhere in India is a massive academy that instructs people in the English language solely in rhyming verse. "Burning is learning, cremation education". Even people with only the slightest English know at least half a dozen random couplets. I'm going to donate a truckload of Snoop Dogg CD's to this academy and blow India's mind.
Oct 14, 2009
Young Buddha Got It Bad Cuz I'm Brown
Right about now Indianz With Attitude court is in full effect.
Maharaja Dre presiding in the case of IWA versus the police department.
Prosecuting attourneys are MC Curry, Ice Lassi and Masala muthafuckin Chai.
Order order order. Ice Lassi take the muthafuckin' stand.
Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth
and nothin but the truth so help your pajama-wearin' ass?
Why don't you tell everybody what the fuck you gotta say?
FUCK THA POLICE
On my way back to Varanasi from a place called Sarnath, my rickshaw got stuck in a mix of vehicle and pedestrian traffic that had all the makings of a riot. Dozens of assault-rifle wielding police officers were escorting a backhoe which I first thought was just being a pain in the ass and blocking traffic. Soon I realized it was methodically assaulting shops and tearing down parts of the storefronts as shopkeepers and cutomers fumed within. Crawling down a kilometer long stretch of road we saw the evidence of a day spent unannouncedly destroying parts of people's livelihoods, bricks and iron laying in twisted piles in front of hundreds of shops, and people's eyes fixed in rage upon the invading machine. I'm sure somebody knows why this is happening, but I'm just gonna go ahead with what is usually the proper response and say Fuck Tha Police.
It's been a busy day, between hanging out with my surprisingly philosophical gaggle of little children, visiting monumnents out of town, and having lengthy discussions with priests and gurus of three different religions, I absorbed a fair amount of knowledge, leaving just enough time to slice my way through an angry mob.
First things first. One of my little child friends informs me that last night's episode with the handgun was nothing to be concerned by. To paraphrase my little buddy "If he own a hotel in this hood, fo sho he packin' heat." It's becoming increasingly obvious that I'm living the hood life. Last night in addition to the customary dogfight, I also got to hear an argument over the price of opium. The lodge shuts itself closed with steel doors at 10 and the owner takes a gun when he goes out at night. This is why I'm always shutterred up in this bitch blogpostin'. At least until I get my nine.
Today I decided to get out there a little and I took a day trip out to Sarnath, a peaceful little town with an assortment of ruins marking the spot where Buddha gave his first sermon and thus started the cycle of the wheel of law. It is the birthplace of Buddhism. One day they're gonna build a stupa to Ghostface Buddha at a netcafe in the Pahar Ganj of Delhi marking the spot where I first made a cow shit joke online.
Sarnath is a lovely little place. There are a plethora of quiet Buddhist temples and monks from the various Buddhist countries wander around and mingle with the foreign tourists and Indian picnicking couples. I'd have to say the Sri Lankan temple was my favorite, as it was quite nicely built, had a tranquil garden of palms and a sacred bodhi tree, a golden Buddha statue quite like the logo of this fine website, and also had a deer park. I spent a great deal of time walking about reading pearls of Buddhist wisdom carved everywhere in about 15 languages. I also talked to a Buddhist monk but he had to scurry off and assist a pack of Japanese Buddhists, who even in their grey robes and orange sashes still carry a bevy of GPS-enabled, mp3-playing, remote-control-helicoptering cameras and needed someone to take the group photos.
You take your shoes off to visit temples, but I decided to just wander around the whole town barefoot. The very idea that it was possible to do this without having to constantly dodge paan spit, broken masonry, and animal manure was an irresistible novelty. People looked at me funny. Them bitches got a smile and a toe-wiggling they will never forget.
I eventually stumbled into a Jain temple, where I talked to a disciple for about an hour. Jainism, I have concluded, is essentially Buddhism on acid. He opened our discussion by distinguishing between the two branches of Jainism and proudly announced that he was of the minority Sky-Clad variety, meaning that when he becomes a guru in his own right he will go around completely naked. To illustrate this point he presented a massive folder of photographs of himself with the various naked gurus he studied under, naked-ass gurus blessing government ministers, and a picture of the Dalai Lama seemingly bowing before a Jain guru's member. Sarnath is holy to Jains because one (three? I forget how many) of the Jain tirthankas (sort of like prophets) were born here....hundreds of millions of years ago. They were also several stories tall and lived for various periods of a thousand to 8 million years. Mahavira, the last tirthanka and a historical figure quite similar to Buddha makes the most sense, while the others sound like characters from the underwater sequence in the film Yellow Submarine. Because of their diminishing size, the fact that Mahavira was a reasonable human height leads Jains to conclude that the next one who will show up in about 100 million years will be approximately a foot tall. The disciple confessed that he had great difficulty understanding these matters, as they were incredibly bizarre in comparison with the actual philosophical tenets of his faith...which is saying something.
One thing I have to say about the Jains is that they're consistent. Though they've been around 2500 years, they are willing to accept the implications of modern knowledge on their faith. For instance, now the naked gurus aren't even allowed to wash themselves, because this would kill bacteria and they are sworn to harm no living thing. I quickly concluded that I don't want to be a Jain, because I roll over in my sleep, potentially killing insects, and I also am not attracted to the idea of pulling out all the hairs on my body one by one with my bare hands. I am a hairy man. Plucking my thighs alone would give me arthritis; going any higher would leave my hands reduced to a cyborg appendage on a stump, leaving me looking like a naked, bald Luke Skywalker.
Finally I entered the archaeological site where the ruins of some of the world's oldest Buddhist structures are lying around. Among these is an enormous round brick tower marking the precise spot where the Buddha first expounded the core of Buddhism to an audience of 5 erstwhile ascetic friends. The Buddhist monks I talked to spoke with deep reverence for the place. It's not every day when you can see the place where your deepest beliefs originated. I'm no Buddhist (or a Jain, no matter how cool they are) but all told Sarnath was a pretty cool historical experience.
Back in Varanasi I instantly ran into my kid buddies again. This time they directed me to a riverside Diwali ceremony where fire-dancers and yogis performed on mattresses at the ghats while hundreds of ecstatic saddhus singed and clapped along to the music, pausing only to smear red paint on my face and toss candles into the river. One of my urchin chums bought me dinner and me and the cook talked about the meaning of life.
India rules.
Oct 13, 2009
My Home Away From Home. Also, A Gun
Varanasi is the holiest city in all of the Hindu religion. It lies on the Ganges river and is said to have been founded by Shiva, the most important of the Hindu deities. To die in Varanasi grants one instant liberation from the cycle of birth and death, the ultimate goal of the spirit in Hindu philosophy.
I'm sorry, I have to stop for just a second. I just started typing this basic history of Varanasi when the restaurant manager at my lodge comes up to me at the computer and excuses himself to open a locked drawer just above my keyboard. He pulls out a pistol and says "This is American gun, from Obama." This is happening in REAL TIME. OK now I am having a discussion about Barack Obama and the history of the Nobel Prize with a man casually waving a firearm. Something is being muttered about Muslims. We're now discussing the alleged stupidity of both Barack Obama and the nation of Sweden. Now he's reading what I'm typing. Now I am telling you in real time about what my subject is saying about what I am saying about him in real time. I think I just founded Gonzo Postmodernism. The gun has been tucked into his trousers, and he's going out into the alley...
OK where was I?
Historically, the city has been a major religious center since at least 1400 BC and a handful of sites have been used continually since that time. It is a beautiful and bizarre place.
Arriving in Varanasi, one gets the familiar feeling that surely nothing must be holy, because Varanasi forms the third apex of what I call the Douchemuda Triangle, the well-known trio of Delhi, Agra, and Varanasi that suffer from the worst of tourist-plaguing scum. Fortunately, my India game has increased substantially since the dark early days in Delhi and I was able to navigate the thoroughly unnatractive new districts on the fringes of town with relative ease. The rickshaw drivers dropped their full arsenal of attempted scams, until I caused such a scene that they had to call in other drivers whose reputations had not yet been tarnished by being caught in bullshit. After being dropped on the edge of the Old City, more rickshaw-wallahs offered to take me here and there, all bullshit. When I finally told them where I was actually going one guy offered up "Is very far, over two kilometers!" Knowing this was patently false I said it was more like 500 meters and the rickshaws weren't allowed there anyways. "OK OK, one kilometer" he offered, performing an astounding feat of rickshaw-wallahdom that moved the location of the Golden Vishnuwarantha Temple and transcended geography and physics as we know them. "Oooohhhh magic!" I exclaimed, prompting uproarious laughter from the assembled crowd (India is crowded, crowds assemble themselves over anything) and impressing the erstwhile scammers such that one actually took it upon himself to lead me through the alleys without a hassle or pitch.
Once you get into Varanasi's Old City, everything changes. It is a dark maze of exceptionally narrow streets between centuries-old lodges, bazaars, and countless temples and shrines, ranging from 9 to 2 feet wide. There are no cars, no rickshaws, and for the first time in India I heard no honking. It was bliss. Walking down the street one brushes shoulders with a diverse cast of characters. There are tourists. there are merchants and the ubiquitous hustlers and fixers they rely on. There are drug dealers and pimps. The drug dealers identify themselves immediately ("want something high?"), whereas the pimps blend seamlessly into Indian society, revealing their true intents only once they have tested the waters with lengthy small talk. There are policemen by the hundreds, armed with rifles and tucked in squads into tiny alcoves from which they maintain order, most importantly serving as a shield against religious fanaticism, because if there is anywhere where religious zealotry could suddenly combust, it is here.
Most noticeably of all, there are the myriad different Hindu priests and holy men. One of the great things about Hinduism is that it accommodates an essentially infinite variety of religious practice. However, this also has the effect of giving the loonies free reign. Varanasi draws a dazzling array of wandering religious men, most of whom have long beards, painted skin, and orange robes draped over their haggard bodies. Some are additionally weighed down with purple and yellow cloths, wreaths of flowers, skulls, bells, pots, conch horns, and an array of offerings to be made on the circuit of the city's greatest shrines. Some of these men carry the very aura of piousness, others seem suspiciously like kooks who take great pleasure in leading a life where they can paint themselves and harangue strangers with bells.
There are the cows. Dear lord, are there cows. Fat, happy cows. In Varanasi, the myth of a single cow bringing all traffic to a stop is true, not because traffic ever really stops for a cow (there are no rules to the road, you just go around), but because the cows are so fat and the streets so narrow that one may find oneself in a standoff with a creature that takes up the entire passage and has horns. However, I can't bring myself to dislike the cows here. They just seem to belong, hanging in their favorite alleys and wandering the cityscape without a care. Within the physical body of every cow is God, I was told one night over tea by the side of the Ganges. The cows here are so serene, so strangely noble, that I can feel myself almost starting to believe it.
Finally, in Varanasi there is the unmistakable presence of death. It was here that the Lord of Death was given his power, except in the City of Life itself. Varanasi's spiritual heart is the ghats, the massive riverside steps that extend along the length of the city. There are dozens, each capped with temples and shrines. From the steps people commune from all walks of life. There are the laundymen, the meditating saddhus, the pious pilgrims washing themselves in the God-infused waters of the Ganges. Finally there are the dead. Two of Varanasi's ghats are the great burning ghats, where the dead are publicly cremated by the sacred river. At the larger of the two cremation ghats, massive piles of firewood line the streets and barges offshore, with dozens of funeral pyres burning at a time. The heat is tremendous and the smoke, though mostly from the hundreds of kilograms of wood in each pyre, feels as though it fills the lungs with the ashes of the dead and the crackling cloud-bound embers of liberation.
With liberation as its reward, countless people travel here to die. Above the ghats where the dead are burnt, within the warmth of their glow, lodges house the dying who await their turn. One can look through the darkened windows of these lodges and see nothing for the dying lie too low to be seen, but every few minutes a party of Untouchables carries another veiled corpse from these quarters or from the narrow alleys leading to the rest of the city. Over 300 people are burnt here every day. An additional 100, Untouchables, lepers, outcasts, and holy men who have transcended the caste system are bound to rocks and dropped into the Ganges.
I'm not drawn to these spectacles of death. Indeed, for the most part I avoid them. The heat is uncomfortable, the endless activity of overlapping funerals at the ghat approaches the mundane so much that it is numbing. I find myself tethered here instead by an intense awareness of life. Perhaps with such stark contrast in evidence, pillars of white smoke perpetually marking the cremation ghat's position on the riverside, an awareness of life is all but inevitable. Everyone else here seems to feel life too. The sincerity of the pious gazing longingly into the Ganges, the remarkable color and vibrancy of the city's spiritual life, the ever-present clamor of bells, the majesty of the massive steps leading up into the city, the claustrophobic lanes where one can't help but be bumped into one of the innumerable shrines, flowerpots and candles floating downstream, the brilliant flood-weathered architecture all make this an inescapably alluring place.
Aside from working on a valuable article for work about the finer points of travel by rickshaw, I've mostly just been absorbing the city and learning my way through the labyrinth, periodically sit by the river and learn my way up and down the riverside through all the gates. I have favorites. The Marikarnika Ghat, though known mostly for its cremations which I avoid, has also a fascinating pool, said to be the well into which Shiva dropped his earring in a cosmic dance at the time of creation. Just beyond this is the Scindia ghat, where a massive Shiva temple has fallen into the river, leaving its ornate spire tilting out of the waters. The waters rise several stories every monsoon season. I am assured that the trees on the plain across the river are left completely underwater. Looking at the height at which the main shrines sit above the steps, and the height to which the steps are caked in thick, packed mud, I am inclined to believe this. The city maintains a fleet of small pump-boats whose purpose is to blast river water at the mud and clean off the monsoon's deposits on the ghats. Firehoses are pumped without regard for passers-by and without warning, sending pilgrims and cows alike to scatter in shock. Sometimes this occurs at perfectly clean ghats. I suspect this is the stepcleaners' way of fucking with priests, cows, and the Establishment. If I could turn firehoses on smug-ass cows and unsuspecting meditating saddhus every day, that might be the one job in India I would trade for my own.
I'm making Varanasi my base in India, a place to periodically return. I can sit on the ghats for hours, and the absence of honking and smog make it an appealing place to work between journeys. Indeed, I have all my needs met without having to leave the twisting confines of the Old City, free from the ugly commotion and decrepitude of New India. I have a little room in a lodge in a tiny alley. At one end of the alley is a marvelous Japanese cafe, at the other an Indian restaurant with live Classical Indian music. I've got a computer and hot breakfast and it's cheap. My alley has a rotating cast of cows, some of whom I'm starting to recognize as regulars. My only complaint is that I have a first-floor window facing an even narrower alley leading to a busy temple, and every night a battle between three angry dogs for mastery of this alley takes place beneath my window, interrupted only by the occasional interventions of a man of questionable mental health.
I was going to write some more about my theories regarding the Indian rules of traffic, the institution of Indian pimphood, and the beginner's guide to buffalo herding I promised, but I got carried away writing about how much I love Varanasi. That and I was literally interrupted by a dude with a handgun.
He hasn't come back. I'd really like to know what he's up to.
I'm sorry, I have to stop for just a second. I just started typing this basic history of Varanasi when the restaurant manager at my lodge comes up to me at the computer and excuses himself to open a locked drawer just above my keyboard. He pulls out a pistol and says "This is American gun, from Obama." This is happening in REAL TIME. OK now I am having a discussion about Barack Obama and the history of the Nobel Prize with a man casually waving a firearm. Something is being muttered about Muslims. We're now discussing the alleged stupidity of both Barack Obama and the nation of Sweden. Now he's reading what I'm typing. Now I am telling you in real time about what my subject is saying about what I am saying about him in real time. I think I just founded Gonzo Postmodernism. The gun has been tucked into his trousers, and he's going out into the alley...
OK where was I?
Historically, the city has been a major religious center since at least 1400 BC and a handful of sites have been used continually since that time. It is a beautiful and bizarre place.
Arriving in Varanasi, one gets the familiar feeling that surely nothing must be holy, because Varanasi forms the third apex of what I call the Douchemuda Triangle, the well-known trio of Delhi, Agra, and Varanasi that suffer from the worst of tourist-plaguing scum. Fortunately, my India game has increased substantially since the dark early days in Delhi and I was able to navigate the thoroughly unnatractive new districts on the fringes of town with relative ease. The rickshaw drivers dropped their full arsenal of attempted scams, until I caused such a scene that they had to call in other drivers whose reputations had not yet been tarnished by being caught in bullshit. After being dropped on the edge of the Old City, more rickshaw-wallahs offered to take me here and there, all bullshit. When I finally told them where I was actually going one guy offered up "Is very far, over two kilometers!" Knowing this was patently false I said it was more like 500 meters and the rickshaws weren't allowed there anyways. "OK OK, one kilometer" he offered, performing an astounding feat of rickshaw-wallahdom that moved the location of the Golden Vishnuwarantha Temple and transcended geography and physics as we know them. "Oooohhhh magic!" I exclaimed, prompting uproarious laughter from the assembled crowd (India is crowded, crowds assemble themselves over anything) and impressing the erstwhile scammers such that one actually took it upon himself to lead me through the alleys without a hassle or pitch.
Once you get into Varanasi's Old City, everything changes. It is a dark maze of exceptionally narrow streets between centuries-old lodges, bazaars, and countless temples and shrines, ranging from 9 to 2 feet wide. There are no cars, no rickshaws, and for the first time in India I heard no honking. It was bliss. Walking down the street one brushes shoulders with a diverse cast of characters. There are tourists. there are merchants and the ubiquitous hustlers and fixers they rely on. There are drug dealers and pimps. The drug dealers identify themselves immediately ("want something high?"), whereas the pimps blend seamlessly into Indian society, revealing their true intents only once they have tested the waters with lengthy small talk. There are policemen by the hundreds, armed with rifles and tucked in squads into tiny alcoves from which they maintain order, most importantly serving as a shield against religious fanaticism, because if there is anywhere where religious zealotry could suddenly combust, it is here.
Most noticeably of all, there are the myriad different Hindu priests and holy men. One of the great things about Hinduism is that it accommodates an essentially infinite variety of religious practice. However, this also has the effect of giving the loonies free reign. Varanasi draws a dazzling array of wandering religious men, most of whom have long beards, painted skin, and orange robes draped over their haggard bodies. Some are additionally weighed down with purple and yellow cloths, wreaths of flowers, skulls, bells, pots, conch horns, and an array of offerings to be made on the circuit of the city's greatest shrines. Some of these men carry the very aura of piousness, others seem suspiciously like kooks who take great pleasure in leading a life where they can paint themselves and harangue strangers with bells.
There are the cows. Dear lord, are there cows. Fat, happy cows. In Varanasi, the myth of a single cow bringing all traffic to a stop is true, not because traffic ever really stops for a cow (there are no rules to the road, you just go around), but because the cows are so fat and the streets so narrow that one may find oneself in a standoff with a creature that takes up the entire passage and has horns. However, I can't bring myself to dislike the cows here. They just seem to belong, hanging in their favorite alleys and wandering the cityscape without a care. Within the physical body of every cow is God, I was told one night over tea by the side of the Ganges. The cows here are so serene, so strangely noble, that I can feel myself almost starting to believe it.
Finally, in Varanasi there is the unmistakable presence of death. It was here that the Lord of Death was given his power, except in the City of Life itself. Varanasi's spiritual heart is the ghats, the massive riverside steps that extend along the length of the city. There are dozens, each capped with temples and shrines. From the steps people commune from all walks of life. There are the laundymen, the meditating saddhus, the pious pilgrims washing themselves in the God-infused waters of the Ganges. Finally there are the dead. Two of Varanasi's ghats are the great burning ghats, where the dead are publicly cremated by the sacred river. At the larger of the two cremation ghats, massive piles of firewood line the streets and barges offshore, with dozens of funeral pyres burning at a time. The heat is tremendous and the smoke, though mostly from the hundreds of kilograms of wood in each pyre, feels as though it fills the lungs with the ashes of the dead and the crackling cloud-bound embers of liberation.
With liberation as its reward, countless people travel here to die. Above the ghats where the dead are burnt, within the warmth of their glow, lodges house the dying who await their turn. One can look through the darkened windows of these lodges and see nothing for the dying lie too low to be seen, but every few minutes a party of Untouchables carries another veiled corpse from these quarters or from the narrow alleys leading to the rest of the city. Over 300 people are burnt here every day. An additional 100, Untouchables, lepers, outcasts, and holy men who have transcended the caste system are bound to rocks and dropped into the Ganges.
I'm not drawn to these spectacles of death. Indeed, for the most part I avoid them. The heat is uncomfortable, the endless activity of overlapping funerals at the ghat approaches the mundane so much that it is numbing. I find myself tethered here instead by an intense awareness of life. Perhaps with such stark contrast in evidence, pillars of white smoke perpetually marking the cremation ghat's position on the riverside, an awareness of life is all but inevitable. Everyone else here seems to feel life too. The sincerity of the pious gazing longingly into the Ganges, the remarkable color and vibrancy of the city's spiritual life, the ever-present clamor of bells, the majesty of the massive steps leading up into the city, the claustrophobic lanes where one can't help but be bumped into one of the innumerable shrines, flowerpots and candles floating downstream, the brilliant flood-weathered architecture all make this an inescapably alluring place.
Aside from working on a valuable article for work about the finer points of travel by rickshaw, I've mostly just been absorbing the city and learning my way through the labyrinth, periodically sit by the river and learn my way up and down the riverside through all the gates. I have favorites. The Marikarnika Ghat, though known mostly for its cremations which I avoid, has also a fascinating pool, said to be the well into which Shiva dropped his earring in a cosmic dance at the time of creation. Just beyond this is the Scindia ghat, where a massive Shiva temple has fallen into the river, leaving its ornate spire tilting out of the waters. The waters rise several stories every monsoon season. I am assured that the trees on the plain across the river are left completely underwater. Looking at the height at which the main shrines sit above the steps, and the height to which the steps are caked in thick, packed mud, I am inclined to believe this. The city maintains a fleet of small pump-boats whose purpose is to blast river water at the mud and clean off the monsoon's deposits on the ghats. Firehoses are pumped without regard for passers-by and without warning, sending pilgrims and cows alike to scatter in shock. Sometimes this occurs at perfectly clean ghats. I suspect this is the stepcleaners' way of fucking with priests, cows, and the Establishment. If I could turn firehoses on smug-ass cows and unsuspecting meditating saddhus every day, that might be the one job in India I would trade for my own.
I'm making Varanasi my base in India, a place to periodically return. I can sit on the ghats for hours, and the absence of honking and smog make it an appealing place to work between journeys. Indeed, I have all my needs met without having to leave the twisting confines of the Old City, free from the ugly commotion and decrepitude of New India. I have a little room in a lodge in a tiny alley. At one end of the alley is a marvelous Japanese cafe, at the other an Indian restaurant with live Classical Indian music. I've got a computer and hot breakfast and it's cheap. My alley has a rotating cast of cows, some of whom I'm starting to recognize as regulars. My only complaint is that I have a first-floor window facing an even narrower alley leading to a busy temple, and every night a battle between three angry dogs for mastery of this alley takes place beneath my window, interrupted only by the occasional interventions of a man of questionable mental health.
I was going to write some more about my theories regarding the Indian rules of traffic, the institution of Indian pimphood, and the beginner's guide to buffalo herding I promised, but I got carried away writing about how much I love Varanasi. That and I was literally interrupted by a dude with a handgun.
He hasn't come back. I'd really like to know what he's up to.
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