I’ve been posting my notes from India, scribbled and scrawled all around the country last summer, while I get things up and running around here. Now that things are humming nicely, I’m spending less time fixing things, leaving me more time to post tasty content. But although I’m not quite so desperate for filler anymore, some of you actually seem to like these, so I’ll keep posting them sporadically until they’re all up. If you like, you can keep track of them on a brand spanking new dispatches page.
Thanks for reading!
-mark
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2:30pm Saturday, Aug 4
I've made friends with Anand, from Saskatoon, and he introduces me to Kabir Ali who is apparently a famous poet known all over India. My googling doesn't turn anything up, but either way he's an amazing tour guide, taking me to out-of-the-way temples that I never would have seen otherwise. Yesterday the three of us wandered from temple to temple, with Kabir giving me a long history of the buildings, the gods and the mythologies behind them. His knowledge of Hinduism is incredible -- all the more impressive since he's a Sufi Muslim. After a long day of trekking around in the sweltering heat, wiping sweat off my forehead every few seconds, we stop for a lassi at a shop they say is safe, even for tender-tummied tourists like me. Well what the hell. Lassi is sweetened milk curd, kind of like a slightly chunky yogourt -- for those of you who remember Yop, think Yop with chunks. Much better than it sounds.
Today Kabir takes me to the Bharat Mata -- or Mother India -- temple. All over the country there are temples dedicated to Shiva, Rama, Vishnu, Parvati and all the others, but Varanasi is home to the country's one and only temple dedicated to the nation itself. Inside is a huge relief map of India, over 30 feet by 30 feet, painstakingly carved over eight years out of the same marble used for the Taj Mahal. The rest of the temple took another six years, and was a labour of love of 40 patriotic citizens. Every mountain, every river, every valley is sculpted to perfection and the effect is impressive -- I quickly find myself wishing we had something like this in Canada. Apparently, after independence, Indians realized that they needed to increase their sense of nationhood if they were going to hold together a country with over 700 languages spoken and at least that many "nations." So they built this place, filling the walls with charts showing the evolution from ancient to modern languages spoken here and showcasing paintings of the fathers of the nation, men like Mahatma Gandhi. Of all the temples I've seen in India, this one is by far my favourite -- maybe because it speaks to a kind of spirituality that I can understand, a love of the things a country can represent.
Afterwards, Kabir takes me to the Worker's Village, bringing me into people's homes to show me where and how Varanasi's famous silks are made. Men, women and children sit at huge weaving machines, some for 18 or 20 hours a day, pumping out all kinds and qualities of silk. He takes me to his cousin's shop -- a standard deal where he makes a hefty commission if I buy something. I happily get ripped off, paying 400 rupees for silk wall hangings that should have cost me 200, but I really don't care because I'm still getting two stunning pieces of work for something like $25. I'm not sure if Kabir knows I'm onto his commission game, but he seems to find his cousin's pushy sales technique a little distasteful, and tells his cousin to back off when I say I'm done shopping. Afterwards he only asks for 15 rupees for a day and a half of tour guiding -- not much even here, especially considering he's been paying for our rickshaws and things. He seems happy when I offer to take him out to dinner tomorrow instead.
His cousin is an interesting guy -- a Sufi who's more religious than Kabir, and who chats with me for a half hour or more before trying to sell me anything. We talk (carefully) about Islam, about spirituality, about monotheism and polytheism in general, and (even more carefully, at least on my side) about fanaticism in all its forms. He echoes something Kabir had told me in an earlier chat, when he said "terrorists have no religion; terrorism is their religion."
Before delving into his sales pitch, Kabir’s cousin offers me a free numerology reading over chai, and although I put no stock in predictions based on my name and the first name of my mother, the chai is good and I’ve got nowhere else to be. We sit on a mat in his shop, and a small child brings in chai refills. He pulls out a book in a language that seems neither Hindi nor Arabic, says it’s a Sufi numerology manual and pulls out a pencil to do some quick calculations. He gives me a lot of vague statements about my personality — good attitude, polite, clever — nice to hear but not very impressive stuff. He does tell me though that I will learn a lot from sitting with old men — and between Shiv Shakti and the Dalai Lama’s teacher, I guess I have to say that one’s bang on. Apparently I’m also supposed to avoid friendship with people who have blue or yellow eyes. Who has yellow eyes?
Last night Anand and I, as well as a Swiss guy named Ewald who left for home today, sit on Anand’s roof with a bottle of very questionable Indian vodka. I can see dozens and dozens of temples from up there — just amazing… We talk late into the night about the only thing anyone seems to talk about in this city — spirituality — and Anand says something that fits nicely with that “God is a rainbow” idea. All the religions, he says, teach a different but necessary facet of God. Islam teaches justice, Christianity teaches love, Hinduism teaches the divinity of all things, Buddhism teaches detachment and Judaism teaches law. Interesting stuff and it wasn’t just the vodka.
What else? Despite what the malaria doomsayers tell you, mosquitoes aren’t a problem in Varanasi, at least not this time of year — the real annoyances are the gnats, tiny little things that unlike mosquitoes take only a split second to bite you before flitting away, making them almost impossible to swat. And I’m having a tough time getting used to the bicycle rickshaws — they make me feel like some sort of British colonist military officer, riding on my perch while the rickshaw-wallah pedals like a madman to get his cart going the pace of a brisk walk. Kinda feels wrong to hand him 20 rupees for a fifteen-minute ride, but he’s usually happy to have the five extra ones over the usual fare…
I’ve got no explanation for the crazy things that are happening around me here, or for the incredible and unlikely people I meet. I just know that there’s something about this place — and about Varanasi in particular — that is mystical and sacred in a way my little non-religious Western brain doesn’t understand. I head to Delhi in 3 1/2 days, and I should be home two days after that. But I plan to maximize this time and talk to as many people as I can, experience as much as I can, and grow as much as possible. I’m changing in this place, I can feel it so strongly it’s crazy. And I think I’m going to get off the plane in Montreal a little better than I was when I got on.
Take care guys,
Mark
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