Varanasi

   You think you've been to India and then you come to Varanasi. All of India seems condensed here, concentrated into its labyrinth of narrow teeming streets and broader walkways that lead down to the ghats along the Ganges, wide, steep steps running down to the river where people come in the morning for devotional baths and in the evening to chant, sing, and cremate the dead. Where cows have lately been removed from Delhi and seemed scarcer than before in the other places we visited, here the bull is holy and they roam free everywhere, crossing the wider streets, foraging for food along the edges of roads, and taking up most of the space in the narrow walkways that thread their way back from the river. The place is a riot of shops, services, and food vendors, and the variety of people here is striking—Buddhists, beggars, some terribly crippled and desperate, wandering sadhus painted and costumed in striking ways, shop keepers in turbans or in western dress, people in regional dress from Kerala to Rajasthan, all here to make a living, enact a pilgrimage, or bury their dead. It is said that people come to Varanasi to die because to die here insures a transcendence of the cycle of living and dying. Near the area where the cremations take place are huge piles of firewood and long bamboo poles used to make palanquins to carry the dead down to the pyre (we saw some bodies, wrapped in fine fabric and covered in garlands laying on these palanquins just this morning as they awaited cremation). Poverty is everywhere, delapidation, disrepair, people in tatters trying to find food. This side of India, vast to the point of being overwhelming -- the slums, the ruined or failed insfrastructure, radically complicate the version of “shining” India the government wants to propogate and which we in the west are fed in articles about the booming economy in India with its high-tech explosion. This is a fraction of the economy in India in terms of the people it effects. What we've seen here, I'm afraid, is sweeping poverty, a dangerous lack of sanitation, and in infrastructure that can't keep up with the economy's expansion. It's not the kind of India journalists like Tom Friedman write about. He ought to spend a few days in Varanasi and less time in the gleaming towers of Bangalore.

Like many historical sites Varanasi is a kind of paradox, a place people have considered holy for thousands of years, where timeless rituals are played out today much like they were 2,000 years ago. Yet, it is a tourist destination as well. It would be wrong to see it solely as a place of purity threatened by tourism, but it would be just as wrong to see it simply as a tourist site whose significance has been obliterated by tourism. It seems to me that the ancient pilgrimage tradition is itself a form of tourism, so there is a link between contemporary tourism and and the city's history as a destination for pilgrims. There is a tension between the two, of course. We saw it this morning when we were out on our boat 25 yards from the shore where devotees were bathing. On the ghats you have devout Hindus bathing, and in the boats you have tourists taking pictures of them. For the most part it seemed the bathers were content to ignore the tourists, and the tourists were careful not to seem too overzealous with their photography. But then a large group of Rajasthani women in sarees came down to the bottom of the ghat and began to unwrap their sarees, exposing their breasts and beginning to bathe in the river. A man who seemed to have brought them there as a guide became incensed at the tourists in the boats who were taking pictures of the women (Ross and I had put our cameras away by then). He was absolutely indignant about the tourists, shouting loudly at them through the dense fog and ordering them away from the area. Eventually the women finished their bathing while the tourists eventually put away their cameras. This incident seemed to me to capture the paradox of the place, and to reveal how uneasy the accommodation is between those who come to worship and the worst voyeuristic aspects of tourism.

The evening boat ride was intoxicating, a spectacle of color, music, singing, light and mist. It was one of those experiences where one feels utterly transported, lifted out of one's body and one's normal experience of the real. It is interesting how, at moments like this, the sheer visual panorama of experience takes over. Ross and I have talked a lot over the course of the trip about this element of spectacle at the temples and the complicated nature of its function, but here the whole city is a spectacle. The ghat-dominated shoreline of the Ganges is effectively one long outdoor temple. The whole place is holy, the whole place the sanctum sanctorum. Yet at the same time what we walk through and take in is utterly mundane, the fabric of everyday life for the people who live Varanasi. What seems extraordinary to us is simply the normal course of things here. Everything here seems hyper energized, however. This is partly due to the sheer compression of so many people in one place. India in general and Varanasi in particular is crowded as hell. It's physical and aural energy is immense. But the place is also shot-through with a kind of ecstatic energy that comes from their religious fervor and excitement of the pilgrims who come here to bathe in the Ganges or cremate their dead. It must build for months as they plan trips and then for days, again, as they make their way here, so that upon arrival there is a kind of explosion of excitement. And we tourists, pilgrims of another kind, walk around nearly open-mouth, but in awe of what is simply everyday life for the people who come here.

This afternoon we took a long walk with our guide, Ashok, along the entire length of the ghats, the strip of river buildings associated with the city of Varanasi. We began at the far south end proceeded north until the buildings fade from the river side, giving way to scrub brush on the other side of a large bridge that spans the Ganges. This walk took in the entire rhythm and texture of life along the Ganges in Varanasi. The far southern end is all but deserted, dilapidated buildings along the river bank give way to steps (ghats) running down to the river. There are views across the Ganges of a long sand bar that runs down the middle of the river, then, later, of the other side of the river, mostly a flood plain but in places dotted with green and the occasional group that's taken a boat ride across. It isn't until the long middle section of the ghats that one begins to run into crowds of people, a mix of pilgrims who have come to bathe in the river, an assortment of wandering ascetics or sadhus, kids flying make-shift kites, cows, bullocks, goats, monkeys, water buffalo, and tourists from all over. Here and there are barbers giving a shave or a haircut to men by the side of the river (working out of a small box of instruments and lotions), kids selling little candle-filled bowls of flowers to leave in the river as an offering, others playing a crude version of cricket. People pour down two or three central ghats from the narrow lanes above. Beggars line the way down, many in rags and some terribly disfigured or crippled, sharing the space with men carrying bundles of firewood down to the cremation sites, women carrying food or other supplies atop their heads, and an assortment of vendors. This central site is the setting for the music and prayers we witnessed the night before, the central social space along the ghats. As we walked in this area we passed bathers and vendors, but also a women who was adding water to chunks of burned wood she had gathered, kneading it like dark gray bread into a concoction that could be dried and then re-used for fuel. At another point two women had collected cow dung and were kneading it down and separating it out into large pancake-shaped pieces that, once dried, are used for fuel in household kitchens.

There are two points along the ghats dedicated to cremations, one about a third of the way up river from the south end, and another, more populous spot near the north end. For the outsider not familiar with this form of dealing with death these are nearly surreal, even shocking places. I had no point of reference for them. The banks of the river and the steps leading down to them in these places are piled high with firewood, as sea of it everywhere. There are eight or ten cremation fires burning at any one time, more in the evening, creating a spectral effect from a boat floating on the river. Families bring the shroud-wrapped dead down to the Ganges on bamboo-shoot palanquins They are wrapped in colorful shrouds and garlanded. The palanquin is laid gently into the river, the head cover pulled back, and water from the Ganges poured into the mouth of the deceased five times. Then the body is covered again and set on a pyre for burning. Some pyres had almost burned out, others contained half-burned bodies, still others the shroud-wrapped bodies of the dead waiting to be ignited by the eldest son. After the pyre has gone out the men (and only men conduct and attend these rites) take a ritual bath in the Ganges. It is hard to describe the space dedicated to these rituals, tight, dark, crowded, piles of wood everywhere, small and large fires burning here and there, the heat associated with death paradoxically warming your body chilled from the cold, foggy weather. I didn't hear any wailing or crying. As with nearly everything in India, these spaces seemed to embody a riot of activity, controlled chaos and ecstatic, hectic effort.

Our guide explained the virtues of this approach to death in a compelling and moving way (he actually called it “scientific”). When someone dies in an Indian family you don't call the mortuary and have the body taken away to be prepared for burial by a mortician. The body is cared for and prepared for burial by family members, washed, perfumed, clothed, wrapped in a beautiful shroud, prayed over and cared for every step of the way from last breath to dying ember. The body is brought down to the pyre by family members and mourners. In this way Indians are not alienated from death but participate in it in a ritualized way that enables a deep connection with the deceased and helps them to deal with loss. I was reminded here, movingly and surprisingly, of my mother's death nearly two years ago. My brother Greg and I were with her in the end. I held her hand and counted her slowing breaths until finally there were no more. We wouldn't let the mortuary people come to take her because my other brother, Criss, had not arrived yet from New Mexico. We drove to the airport, picked him up, broke the news to him, and then drove back to spend two or three hours with her body in the room, talking, reminiscing, even joking. It was our way of easing the pain of the loss and of somehow participating in the transition connected to her passing. I recall Criss talking about his regret that in our culture we did not prepare the body for burial as they do in India, that we treat death in a phobic kind of way, letting strangers deal with our loved one in antiseptic rooms following ritual forms which in some senses alienate us from death and from the bodies of those who have died. Here that seems never to happen. The living accompany the dead in their final hours and participate in the transition death represents. These cremation sites were, for us, a kind of visual spectacle unlike anything we'd ever seen, but they also represented an engagement with death that was moving, even chastening.

At the end of our long walk along the ghats yesterday our guide met up with a good friend of his who lives nearby where we concluded our walk and we went back to his house for tea. Most of our guides are eager to take us either to their home or to the home of a friend, and these have always been fascinating experiences. The man we met was named Gupta, and his family live in a small, cramped three-story apartment off a busy main road behind a maze of small lanes that seemed to get narrower and narrower until they dead-ended at his doorway in a tight alley. Gupta and his two sons run a cleaning and maintenance service for banks out of their small home, which contains an ample kitchen, and entry area, an office, cleaning supply storage areas, and small bedrooms. A smoky fire on the floor of one room worked to slightly heat the place, the smoke drifting around and up but with no place to really go. It is striking that this family of four, with very little money and living in what struck me as very difficult circumstances, had two servants. This seems the norm all over India, for in other houses we visited there were multiple servants to help prepare food, to clean up, etc. In India you never just have “tea,” of course, for people are extraordinarily hospitable and prepare all sorts of food for you. Gupta's wife, Nimla, made for us what we both agreed was probably the single best dish we've had so far, a simply mix of rice, peas, and spices with a few golden raisins. The rice was unlike any we'd seen. In its uncooked form each piece had somehow been pressed paper-thin so that when it was cooked it had much more surface area and lightness than regular rice. I had struggled with a slightly upset stomach on and off since getting to Varanasi. It had been getting better, but still bothered me, and I said so in trying to avoid eating a spicy dish. But Nimla's son assured me her dish would sooth my stomach. Sure enough, it was the first thing I'd been served in 48 hours I found myself eager to eat. I finished the plate and my appetite immediately recovered.

Like nearly every place I've visited in India, the infrastructure here in Varanasi is in horrible shape. The sewage system, the roads, the electrical grid, plumbing, and the general state of buildings is dilapidated During my last visit to India this seemed to me to be the biggest problem with modernization in India. The economy in pockets is booming, but where it is booming people tend to live off the grid in high rise apartments or housing developments with their own roads, electrical, and sewer system. They don't have to worry so much about a dilapidated infrastructure because they live in a kind of bubble. The rest of the population often lives amidst rubble, in substandard housing with poor sewage, no hot water, early 20^th century plumbing and electrical systems, and a crude road system. The big challenge for India, it seems to me, is to find a way to spread the wealth that is now concentrated in small pockets around urban centers and info parks to the wider culture, those who live in the slums in cities and scratch out a living in villages (here, most young people are migrating to the city, they don't want to do agricultural labor because it is perceived as very difficult work that pays little) and to rebuild its infrastructure. The two, of course, are obviously linked. India needs to find a way to systematically put people to work rebuilding its infrastructure. The money for doing this, according to commentators I've read, can come from foreign investment. India is becoming a magnet for foreign investment, and if this money can be channeled into infrastructure projects that put the vast underclass to work, then you'd have a real “shining” India (instead of the one where a handful of billionaires hold 23 percent of the country's wealth). It is telling that the state of the art infrastructure in India is the airport. This is telling. The roads, plumbing, and electrical grid are woefully inadequate, but the airports, which cater to the commerce of globalization, to tourists, and the Indian upper classes, is in super shape. Along with investment in infrastructure development would have to come modernization in the technologies and forms of labor currently used here to get things done. Road maintenance, the laying of sewers, and the maintenance of archeological sites, for example, are done with a hodge-podge of 20th-century and primitive tools. There are tractors moving earth and large bulldozers working here and there, but elsewhere women in sarees with rags on their heads for padding fill large woks of dirt or gravel, put them on their heads, walk 10 yards, dump it, and return to do it again.

Our last full day in Varanasi was taken up with visiting Buddhist sites and attending a teaching by the Dali Llama, who, luckily for us, comes to Varanasi at this time each year to deliver a series of lectures. Our guide is Buddhist and he had the right connections to get us tickets, which weren't easy to acquire. We spent the morning at Sarnath, the site where it is said Buddha gave his first sermons after achieving enlightenment. He came here to teach five ascetics who broke with him over his taking of rice pudding from a woman who had offered it to them. In the centuries after his death a small devotional city developed here, with temples and stupas and monasteries. What's left looks like a miniature, well-kept Pompeii, low lying brick ruins of votive stupas and temples that spill across a vast lawn and are dominated by a massive decorated stupa or tower. It's a tranquil place, and antidote to the riot of activity in greater Varanasi and along the Ganges. There is a relatively new temple on the site, built in the early 1930s by a Buddhist from Sri Lanka who traveled India in the first decades of the twentieth century trying to reignite Buddhism, which had waned in popularity with the rise of Buddhism in the 11^th and 12^th centuries. The temple contains murals that depict the life of Buddha (it reminded me a bit of the Giotto murals at Assisi depicting the life of St. Francis, although the aesthetic quality of these murals doesn't match Giotto's frescoes). We also visited a museum nearby which houses the fabulous sculptural work dug up in the ruins we visited (the dig was spurred by some Brits in the mid 19^th century who stumbled on some bricks and decided to dig a little deeper). Jewels in this museum include a large decorative column with four lion heads (the symbol of India, it appears on every rupee) and an exquisite stone carving of a sitting Buddha who is teaching).

After the museum we grabbed some snacks and headed for the lecture by the Dali Lama. For some reason I'd always envisioned us sitting in an indoor auditorium, but of course the lecture took place outside on a huge dirt field with a dais for the Dali Llama and other monks at one end. There had to be 4,000 to 5,000 people there, many of them monks and the rest seemingly from Tibet. Ross and I bought an FM radio and some ear buds and we were able to tune in to a very good and clear translation of the lecture. The Dali Lama spoke extemporaneously for awhile and then began to teach from a text many people in the audience had. He spoke for two hours, intelligently, compassionately, and often with great humor. We left in a dangerous crush of people all trying to get out at once through a narrow lane, not very safe and, ironically, it was the monks who were the most pushy and aggressive trying to get out. The Dali Llamhad spoken at the end of his lecture about compassion and I couldn't help thinking it would be nice if the monks pushing and jostling me had a little compassion for the rest of us.

On the drive back into Varanasi we stopped at a ruins site of a bluff above the Ganges where people believe the city was first established, then we headed to an amazing bookstore, Pilgrimage Books. It had a wonderful collection of books about India and Indian philosophy, religion, and architecture, and the interior space was beautiful. We finished with a visit around the corner to the most significant temple in Varanasi, the Durgha temple. It's a dark busy space. You enter through a side door into an open court with the main sanctuary in the center. Around it are pillared platforms to walk, meditate, prostrate yourself, or simply look up at the crescent moon and be amused by its ironic comment on everything you're seeing. The entreprenuial energy of India is a work here in the various “priests” how attend statues of dieties. They invite you vigourously to come to their space, to be touched with ash, and then pay them some rupees. Like wise an astrologer sitting in one of the spaces. The commercial and the spiritual are absolutely fused here, but what church doesn't find a way to collect tithes from its congregations, or solicit its capital by hawking the lord on TV on in huge cathedrals.

We left Varanasi the next morning with our senses quite overwhelmed. The visual spectacle here, tied as it is to solemn practices ranging from prayer and bathing to the cremation of the dead (some bodies, deemed not fit or ready for burning, are wrapped in shawls, rolled out to the center of the river, weighted down with stones, and simply thrust over board into the Ganges), can't help but move you, shift you out of the comfortable assumpitions and rountines you have realated to spirituality and death. But the city is also a shock of poverty and dilapidation where all of the challenges of making the so-called “shining India” a reality for the massages who really seem to live in something close to refugee camps here. The way out, it strikes me, is in the younger generation, and we occasionally meet people of tremendous talent and drive who I believe will push themselves and their country past its poverty and into some stability. One of them is our guide, Ashok's daughter. She's just 17 and showed us around the school her father owns before we left for our flight to Jaipur. What an articulate and energetic and lively young woman she turned out to be. She's bright, charismatic, capable, and ambitious. She wants to study computer programming and engineering and if she's able to to do she'll take off into the shining middle class (they are all over Jaipur, as I will write about below). She's on a fault line. A traditional arranged marriage to a man who keeps her in her home will snuff out her future, but being able to got to university, complete her studies, begin a career and find her own partner in that experience will change everything for her and the family SHE rasises. She's the future, It seems to me those beyond their late 30s who are struck in grinding poverty and a kind of medieval physical existence have very little chance of turning things around themeselves or having the government create massive work projects that will improve their plight substantially.

One last thing about Varanasi. My experience at Sarnath and attending the teaching by the Dali Llama reminded me again of the dramatic differences between Buddhism and Christianity. Simply put, Christianity is about death, sacrifice, sin and punishment while Buddhism is about suffering and desire, doing no harm to others (ahimsa) and using less resources. There is no angst-riddent drama of sin and guilt, no one is driven from paradise for taking carnal knowledge. The whole system is elegant and human-scaled, and belief isn't compelled by belief in miracles but by the effects of the behavior it advocates. The Buddha had no miraculous birth but was simply a man with a normal life who refected it to avoid practices that caused suffering. He wasn't crucified for his beliefs by died of dysenntary at the age of 80 when he at some bad food. There is something attractive about the simple human scale of his life and something compelling about the simplicity of its core assertions (although I've always had a problem, philosophically and practically, with the Budhhist proscription against desire—here is where Buddha's “middle way” is most needed, it seems to me). I've also become attracted here to Jainism, which we hear very little about in the west. I picked up a book about the Jains at the Pilgrimage Bookstore in Varanasi and am going to explore it further.