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.
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7:41am Thursday, Aug 9
I’m writing this from the Hare Rama Guest House in Delhi, after two wonderful and unexpected weeks in Varanasi. In a couple of hours I leave for Indira Gandhi International Airport, and 36 1/2 hours later I arrive back home in Montreal. I feel like I ought to write some grand summary, to sum up in a few words what these five weeks have been for me. Well, maybe if I were a better writer I could do that. As it stands, I’ll do a better job one on one, over a cup of coffee (oh god I miss real coffee) when I get home. So for now, I’ll just try to do justice to the last few days…
If the Himalayan town of Bhagsu is paradise, Sarnath is the next best thing. The site of the Buddha’s first teaching and the birthplace of Buddhism, it’s about fifteen kilometres north of Varanasi. I went twice in three days, and loved every minute of it both times.
The first time I go with Shani, and the overall feel of the place is pastoral, clean, fresh, pure, untouched — everything that the rest of India isn’t. The children here seem more wonderful somehow — maybe because they aren’t constantly asking for money — and the people seem less used to tourists. Or rather, they seem used to a different kind of tourist, Buddhist monks and pilgrims that don’t wear expensive watches, buy t-shirts or throw money around. This place could be an entirely different country, and it’s a stark contrast with cities like Delhi, Bangalore and Benares, cities made of dust and rust and sweat. For all its good vibes, the town is still hot, but except for the constant forehead wiping I hardly notice the heat.
The highlight of my first trip to Sarnath is by far the bhodi tree. The Buddha is said to have become enlightened under a bhodi tree in the town of Bhodgaya, and a graft from that tree was planted in Sri Lanka. Then a graft of that second tree was taken to Sarnath and stands there today, 70 years later. (Ed. Note: Can someone scientifically-minded help me with this one — does that mean the trees all have the same DNA?)
Anyway, Shani and I sit under the bhodi tree for a while. This is a good place — rich and energized by the smiling faithful who flock here from all over the world to sit and watch the tree reaches over its eight-foot protective wall. A worker approaches and hands me one of its leaves, asking if I’d like to touch the tree. I’m expecting him to name a price, but when I say yes he just opens a big padlock on the gate and lets me in. I have no idea why — if he wanted money, he didn’t ask for it. Once inside, Shani and I go up and touch the tree — it’s gorgeous, by the way — and the worker even hands us pieces of its bark to keep. Crazy that we get to come this close to one of the most sacred things in Buddhism, something off-limits to the general public. As we stand inside, a procession of the faithful, monks and tourists alike, marches around the enclosure, chanting mantras while they circle us. After a minute or so it’s time to leave and the worker bids us good day with a smile and a nod — an incredible change from the other 99% of tourism workers who expect a palmful of rupees for every tiny favour granted.
That night I pick up Warner’s guitar and we sit and play on his roof at sunset, overlooking the Ganges. Later we head to a restaurant for chess and Shani takes that group picture [click here and scroll down] where, as Phoebe points out, we all look like we’ve been enjoying Varanasi’s famous “special lassi.” I play against Kabir, the Sufi poet, and win a game I deserved to lose — he makes a silly move towards the end and loses the rook that would have won him the game, and I can’t help wondering if he did it on purpose.
A few nights later Kabir takes us to a poetry reading, where every couple of weeks he and his friends share their latest masterpieces. We cram into a crowded room in someone’s house outside of town — forty or so people in a room that could comfortably fit almost half that many. Poetry in India is generally sung, not spoken, and tonight’s performances run the gamut from melancholy to angry to lovestruck and back again. Or at least, that’s the impression I get, since I’m the only one in the room who doesn’t speak any Hindi, Urdu, Persian or Sanskrit. My friends Anand, from Saskatoon, and Warner, from Cincinatti are both pretty fluent — Warner’s here on a Fulbright scholarship, translating Hindi poetry into English, and Anand was raised with Hindi in the home. Still, my hosts welcome me like an old friend, and I won’t let me leave without sampling their delicious spicy home-cooked food. Stomach bugs be damned, I’m not going to argue. I realize that in spite of India’s continuing religious tensions, and even amid fears of bombings at mosques and temples, the gathered crowd is about evenly split between Hindus and Muslims. And everyone seems to genuinely love everyone else there.
The three of us thank Kabir again and hop a rickshaw to a restaurant that I apparently can’t leave Benares without visiting — a place that is said to make the best mutton in the city. Three to a rickshaw big enough for only one means two of us must ride the sides, and my first time out they offered me the safe centre seat so now I feel obliged to hop a railing and dangle my leg into traffic. It’s actually not as uncomfortable as it sounds, and the only real problem is that every tight turn leaves you reeling and grasping at the cart and the other passengers to keep from falling to the pavement. Poor Anand almost takes a tumble when our jerk-off driver swerves right for no particular reason, just managing to grab Warner’s arm before tipping off. No tip for that him.
I had wanted for a week to check out a strange, foreboding building with plaster skulls on its gate not far from my hotel. Anand tells me though that it is run by the Agoris, black magic practitioners who give Benares much of its reputation for dark, bizarre rituals… He says they roam the burning ghats — spots on the Ganges specially designated for Varanasi’s 24-hour-a-day funeral cremations — and try to gain energy from the neverending death and grief they find there. Death is a central theme in the city — people from all India come here to die, because it’s believed that dying here guarantees freedom from the cycle of birth and rebirth. The Agoris wear black robes and rumour has it that their rituals involve cannibalism and the hypnosis and control of unsuspecting locals — and tourists… They’re said to drain some sort of life force from the weak, the uninformed and the unaware… Anand says the place is open to tourists and the general public, but that it’s something akin to seeing a death magic temple in Haiti and saying “hey, what a cool place to take pictures.” I take his advice and avoid the place.
Last night I fly into Delhi from Varanasi - Shani happens to be on the same flight, and her aunt meets us at the airport. I’m grateful for her invitation to supper, particularly because I haven’t got many rupees left and Im not looking forward to scouring Delhi’s seedy Pahar Ganj district looking for a cheap hotel that accepts VISA. Shani’s family is amazing, stuffing me to the gills and asking their driver, Sonu, to take me first to an ATM, then to a decent guest house. Sonu is wonderful too, and is the second tourism worker I meet who is enormously kind and helpful with no expectation of reward. I actually have to insist three times before he takes the 100 rupees I want to give him for his time, advice, haggling help and willingness to take me all over town looking for a place to sleep. He promises to pick me up tonight as well, to take me to the airport for my flight home.
(The final dispatch — part two of this note — will be posted soon.)
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