The City of 108 Names...

Bags locked, people arranged on the lower-most of the triple-decker beds of the B1 3AC car headed for Varanasi, or Banaras, or Kashi, depending on whose asking and whose responding, we leave the mountains of Risikesh for a different sort of settlement further up the Ganga, or or Ganges, depending on which textbook you consult.

The swaying of the train rocks us all to sleep, singing an initially ear-splitting lullaby that soon becomes sweetly familiar as the wheels of the train clank-clank-clank along the seemingly-endless line of tracks. I fall asleep with one arm clutching my bag with valuables: passport, wallet, camera, iPod, and the other cradling my mandolin, legs wound-up in the straps of my backpack.

“CHAI GARAM CHAI GARAM CHAI” is my alarm clock this morning. I sit up, sleepy-eyed, and feel a Styrofoam plate with vegetable cutlets and a masala omlette stuffed into my lap in between eye rubs. The man will be back to claim his 40 rupees later. The breakfast is almost edible, but everything tastes better after being washed down with a 5 rupee cup of chai.

~*~

I arrive in Banaras after hundreds of miles of yellow flowers and a few too many experimentations with the train food vendors who earn a living by moving up and down the train line, jumping on one train after another and walking up and down the aisles vats of chai, buckets of chips, and fanny platters of chickpeas and tomatoes. I climb off the train with everything I boarded with! --- an accomplishment considering the horror stories I’ve heard about stolen handbags, backpacks, and shoes.

I’ve been told that if I’m looking for the “typical Indian experience”, I’ll find it in Varanasi (or Banaras, depending on who‘s talking). The streets are filled with people dodging bicycles weaving in and out of rickshaws who will stop for nothing but the highly revered cows who move from one trash heap to the next in search of India’s delicacy for its holy, free-roaming livestock: Food Scraps à la Plastic Bag. At sunset, looking out from my hotel room balcony, I see sadhus clad in saffron robes and lay Hindus flocking to the Ganga for the evening ritual fire puja. India: where ropes of spirituality are tied to outright contradictions to form a complex web of chaotic existence coated with a thick layer of dust.

~*~

Watching a human corpse lay on a platform of sandalwood logs, torso separated from legs by engulfing flames, waiting to be burned into ash and accepted into Mother Ganga-ji, a serene calm resonates throughout my body. Death is close.

I don't feel the knot in my throat until I look away from the burning corpse and think about what it would be like to see someone I knew down there. Women aren't allowed on the cremation grounds, so my view was basically where I would have been --- if they let me there at all! Then the knot came. I remembered what it was like to watch the few bodies I've seen be placed and dropped into wholes in the ground, how quickly they disappeared and how distant it made me feel from them. I like it this way much more. It seems more personal, more ceremonial, like you have more time to say goodbye for good and then after, you never know, you could just be swimming among the ashes of a loved-one. That's comforting to me. Now that's not saying that I would swim in the Ganga-ji anytime soon...or ever.

In a holy place,
B(ee)