You May Leave if You Wish

It’s Time to go. On the way out of the hotel to meet Hapiz for my final trip into town, one of my sandals broke and I had to go back to my room to put on my shoes again. I have only worn closed shoes twice since here in India as well as on the set for the film. It is Time.

The concept of Liminality was coined by Arnold von Gennep in his 1909 book, “Rights of Passage.”

For Gennep, the liminal space was the most essential part of a passage from one stage to another. The initiate had to literally both physically and spiritually be removed from the normal status of life and thrown into an other “world,” in which he or she would endure a rite of passage, being made into a new person, and then re-integrated into society. The re-integration is crucial, for otherwise, an initiate can remain stuck in a terminal space of liminality, in perpetual limbo. Paralyzed from action.

Yesterday marked the nominal count of 7 billion people as the “official” census of the world’s population.

One in six of those people live in India. That is not a difficult concept for me to grasp having been here now for ten weeks. There are a lot of people.

India herself is in a liminal stage. The country is squarely between the First World of undeveloped and the Third World of “developed.” Like everything else in India, it takes the Second World to the extreme. There are many internal debates raging here. Is India the mythical, spiritual land of superstition and magic of ancient tribal religions, or is the next stop on the IT Superhighway? The answer is “Mu.” Neither and both at the same time.

Mu is a Japanese term for “no, but not no.” A negation and a negation of that negation at the same time, an infinite loop of negation, rendering the question null and void. India is a land that just took on F-1 with a new multi-million dollar race circuit while half the population is below the world poverty line. India is the land of Temples gopalums and Supercomputer towers. It is Bollywood millionaires and the slumdogs of Mumbai. Perhaps you saw that just this past week, a real “slumdog” won India’s millionaire show, a coincidence that is so common in India that they can no longer be called coincidences.

In the universities, protests are springing up all over India with manifestations against and for dress codes, keeping castes separate or breaking them down, racial profiling against non-vegetarians and Hindus, language divisions and barriers. In one major university in Delhi, book banning of “blasphemous” books has begun, sparking outrage and support at the same time.

In Forester’s “A Passage to India,” he divides the books into sections showing the intricate fabric of India’s major religions: Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain, and their even further convolution with Christianity and Western beliefs and customs. India is all of this and much, much more.

It has the largest Identity Crisis of any country I have ever seen, and yet, simultaneously, I have never been in a country that was so certain of who it is. India knows that it is India. Make no mistake about that.

India is hyper-progressive, ultra-conservative, eternally stuck in the past, but with greater visions for the future than the rest of the world. It is the most complex and challenging place I can imagine being in.

It has challenged me. It has humbled me beyond measure and words. It has stripped me down of prejudices and preconceptions that serve no purpose.

Because of the sheer numbers of people, I have heard many times that India does not place a value on human life. I disagree. Nowhere else have I been that every single action revolves around “Being Human,” as the t-shirts say.

I am not so naïve as to think that every person is walking around chanting Sanskrit, contemplating the cycle of life, just as not all Europeans are sitting in cafes, drinking strong coffee and discussing politics and philosophy, nor do all Americans have picnics celebrating freedom, eating hotdogs and grilling hamburgers. And yet, they are. Like or not stereotypes exist for a reason, and each of these stereoptypes do exist and they are part of those countries. And, each one is part of me. I feel a kindred spirit to each one of these elements and they are what make me me.

Hapiz, my faithful Muslim Tuk-Tuk driver and guide says often, almost mantra-like, “Varanasi has three parts: one part Hindu, one part Muslim, one part Buddhist.” And, like the trimurti of Shiva that is one of many faces of India, each face has an infinite manifestations of avatars reflected in each one of us.

Like Indra’s Net, each of our lives are individual gems, infinitely reflecting all lives in our own. It is was connects us, even if we are so very distant, estranged, or in conflict.

This trip to India came at a crucial juncture in my life, a threshold to a new one, leaving behind and old one. India taught me not just how to be a human, but more importantly, like the third metamorphosis of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, it taught me to view the world with the wonder of a child again, to be a child again.

Having just been to the so-called Monkey Temple (due to a plethora of monkeys in it), my last stop in Varanasi, and consequently India, I sat watching people from all walks of life file in and out of the temple, ringing the bell after the darshana, wafting the incense in their faces, listening to the chants in the background. Men, women, and children from all socio-economic levels filing past, one after another.

I could have stayed for a lifetime, but, I can’t. I am not from here. I am not Hindu and I am not Indian, and never can be in this lifetime. India was indeed a passage for me, a liminal Space and Time in which I learned again what is most important to me. I have been “alone” for 10 weeks, but never have I felt more full.

And, so, I left.

Fair Enough, Varanasi

It is amazing the difference that one person can make sometimes. My experience of Varanasi has taken on so many twists and turns now with Hapiz and he has shown me an entirely different city. He is a kind man and helps others constantly during our little city excursions and he has taken me to parts of the city I would have never gone alone, much less known they existed. Because of him, Varanasi has emerged for me, through the filth, the grime, the pollution and the incredible amount of people packed into a very small space.

Today, the highlights that I have pictures of below were Pilgrim's Bookstore which had an amazing selection of Sanskrit and Buddhist texts that I was able to find some real gems at next to nothing. For me, that's geeking pretty hard, and it was great.

We also went into the Moghul Muslim neighborhood, which was yet another interminable maze of side streets that Hapiz went bobbing ahead of me as I was tripping over myself (and cows, kids, goats, scooters, chickens...) to keep up with him.

Here, the entire process of the world-famous Varanasi silk brocade work is done, from boiling the silk to punching out unique design templates to the weaving and dyeing itself. The whole quarter was echoing with the clanging of the looms, sounding very much like a chorus of old-fashioned printing presses, which is what I thought the noise was when we first came upon them. And, of course, the showroom, which I then got to see the "private" collection as these prints are not exported, only sold in Varanasi.

And, later, to end the day, I went back with Hapiz to the evening Pooja celebration on the banks of the Ganges. This time from the front and not the boat's viewpoint. Each evening, every day of the year, they say good night to the Ganges with an elaborate display of fire, incense, and of course, noise. Lots of noise. Bells, horns, conches, tablas, chanting, and just general background noise create a surreal ceremony to the great River Goddess Ganga transforming the smelly muddy waters into an incense-filled delight of sights, sounds, and smells. Again, India responds.

Enjoy.

Shave and A Haircut, Six Bits

Today, while visiting Sarnath, I finally got my Indian haircut. One of the things I like to do in each country I go to is to get a haircut and/or straight razor shave if possible.

While waiting for the museum to re-open, I went to one of the many street-side "barber shops" that are all around Varanasi and environs. I have been wanting to get one since Madurai, but because of my role in the Bishop Sargent movie, for continuity, I have not had a haircut since I arrived in India.

Today, my wish came true. After Hapiz, my trusted Tuk-Tuk driver from yesterday's phantasmagorical journey, persuaded the barber to take me in, as he first refused, probably not wanting me to pollute his stall. But, luckily, Hapiz is a very affable person and got me in.

For 50 rupees, just over a dollar, I got a great haircut, straight razor shave and scalp and facial massage under the banyan tree, while listening to the birds.

Paramananda.

A Pornography of Death, The Prestige

A Pornography of Death,  The Prestige


Pornography, to write about prostitutes, originally from the Ancient Greek porne (prositute) + graphein (to write); compare hagiography, to write about the holy, or hagios.

 From Christopher Nolan’s movie, The Prestige, about rivaling illusionists, we learn that a proper illusion has three elements: the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige.

The Pledge shows us something ordinary, a small bird for example. The Turn, likewise, makes the Pledge disappear. However, the true stamp of an illusion is the Prestige, in which the Pledge is brought back, but with a twist, something better, a bigger bird.

Mãyã, in Sanskrit, means “illusion” or “magic.” It is neither good, nor evil, neither black, nor white magic, but merely just an illusion. The Buddha taught that life and reality is just such an illusion, the product of Queen Mãyã’s sleight of hand. Much like the Faerie Queen Mab that haunts the dreams of Romeo’s star-crossed mind, deluding him of reason and rhyme, Mãyã weaves a web of illusion across our world-weary lids, causing us to believe in a world that doesn’t really exist.

Varanasi is the city where people come to die. It is the city of prostituting Death and proffering lies.

Varanasi is the city of illusions dispelled. It is the City of the Dead.

The Pledge was shown to me this morning. A confounded trip along the Ganges, sparking annoyance in me, bringing to question, “have I really even learned anything this entire trip?”

The Turn made India disappear from my eyes when I went to the  Varanasi Mall next door to my hotel. Suddenly, before my eyes, I was back to the “reality” of shopping malls and McDonald’s. I had been filtered through the masses at the Taj Mahal, and now, the Turn had made it all disappear. “My India” as my friend said, was over, and I was missing it. Indeed, but, it wasn’t.

Like a frustrated John, I went back to my pimp, demanding satisfaction. I went out to the waiting rickshaws in front of the hotel, and having argued with a group of them who were all pushing and shoving each other to get my fare, I settled on an honest-looking man with bloodshot eyes and a bit of a turban.

“Why are you going to the Ganges now?”

“For the Pooja.”

“You want to go on the boat again?”

“I’m not sure,” I hesitated, remembering the morning, and I wasn’t sure.

After meandering through an inexhaustible tangle of traffic, my driver took me then through what was the most intricate labyrinth of backstreets I have ever seen in any city. Rickshaws are not allowed to go up to the main ghats where the Pooja is being performed, but he knew a secret passage. We went through the thickest of the thick part of old town. This was not the tourist way to say the least. For a moment, the paranoia set in that I was going to be taken to a backstreet and robbed of what little I had and my camera. I felt a bit uneasy, feeling less like a seasoned traveler and more like a nervous tourist, but it soon passed.

We pulled over and he said, “Follow me,” and off he went like the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole of even more labyrinthine walkways, his mock turban my only marker of him in the crowd, trying to keep pace with his incredible fleet feet. Then, suddenly, we walked out onto the Kedar Ghat, which is next to the “holy man” academy that I had seen earlier and the state-run crematorium.

The sun had set by now, and the river seemed empty, devoid of the thousands of boats from the morning. I was a bit confused.

He summoned a young man from the bottom of the ghat to come up. He asked if I wanted to go on the boat.

“How much?” I asked quite briskly.

“You come down, I show you, tell you the price on the boat.”

“I’m not stepping on the boat til you give me a price.”

I think it was apparent from my tone, this was not bargaining time.

“Six hundred.”

“O.K.”

My rickshaw driver said he would wait for the two hours on the ghat and take me back. I agreed.

The middleman passed me over to my ferryman. A tall, gaunt man of about my age, probably younger, though aged harder by life, features carved from his face with a silent expression of having seen life from a different angle than I could ever imagine. Crimson and white paste on his forehead, suggesting his caste, mostly likely quite low.

For the next two hours, every sense of orientation about what I had seen and experienced from the morning was transformed into an alternate universe. The Prestige.

It had all been given back, India in her most bizarre, most challenging, most magical, most haunting, most elusive and illusive.

To experience India at the fullest is likened I image to having your skull cut open under local anesthesia and every pre-conceived idea or concept that you ever had about what is possible, plausible, practical, or potential is scraped cleanly out of your mind, your brain replaced, emptied, and your skull screwed back on. Something like that.

For the evening ride, going upstream past the smaller crematorium, we were nearly alone on the pitch black Ganges, the only light was the burning of the funeral pyres.

“One hundred bodies each hour. Small child, no pyre. Poor, no pyre. A “no-touch,” no pyre. All day, all night.”

We sat there bobbing on the water, the chugging of a diesel engine in the background from a dredging pump. What had disgusted me this morning about watching Death as a spectacle suddenly changed quite dramatically. I watched as one body after another was brought down the ghat and placed on a fire in turn.

We then headed downstream.

Approaching the Dasaswamedh (ten-horse sacrifice) Ghat, which is the main one, was a spectacle that I cannot begin to describe, the Pooja. But, we passed on by, for now.

We went down to the other crematorium, the one where people pay privately. Here, the corpses are brought down wrapped in gilded garments and swathed in white. The undertaker undresses the garments and carefully the body is placed upon the pyre. Many people are around the pyre, chanting, but not crying. I hear someone in a boat near ours explaining that this is seen as Moksha, or release. It is not a Time of sadness, but of joy. A celebration of Life, not mourning for Death.

When the body has been burned, the undertaker takes the skull from the ashes and breaks it open, releasing the Soul. The ashes are left, and the family and friends turn their backs to the Ashes. The ashes don’t matter, they are the past. The Soul has been released.

“The city will sweep away all of the ashes in the morning...” Meanwhile, monkeys and stray dogs are scampering around the various piles of ashes.

We then head back upstream, back to the ongoing Pooja.

In an incredible display of lights, music, and incense, the final Pooja of Diwali takes place. It is a full-on celebration of Life. It is mesmerizing, beautiful, and pure serenity. We sit for about a half an hour with the other boats, nearly all of them filled with Indians and very few tourists. The exact opposite of this mornings macabre fleet of spectators.

As the Pooja festival winds down, we head back upstream to the Kedar Ghat, where my driver is waiting.

My personal Charon docks the dinghy and disappears into the shadows after I have paid him. I go back up to the maze of backstreets with my driver, whose name I still don’t know. He smiles back at me with bettel-stained teeth and bids me to follow.

We get back to the rickshaw and in another serpentine ride, we manage our way back to a restaurant I found out about yesterday. I ask him to drop me off there and we agree that he will take me to Sarnath tomorrow. He does not ask for the 300 rupees tonight for the 4 hours he spent with me as a promise that he will show up in the morning. I bid him farewell, still not knowing his name.

Tomorrow, I go to Sarnath, to Vulture Peak, where the Buddha began to teach, having won out over the battle against Mãyã, realizing that all that we have taken for granted, all that we thought we knew, all that has been Pledged to us as reality, can be taken from us in a flash, stripping us of any remaining vestiges of preconditioned thought, Turning into Ashes, revealing the Prestige of Life in the indifferent face of Death.

A Pornography of Death

Pornography, to write about prostitutes, originally from the Ancient Greek porne (prositute) + graphein (to write); compare hagiography, to write about the holy, or hagios.

Varanasi has not disappointed. It is exactly what I expected to find.

Varanasi, the city where people go to die. For around 200 rupees, or about 3 and a half dollars, you can be cremated by the state of India on the banks of the river Ganges. For ten times that, you can watch people being cremated from a boat on the Ganges, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of other tourists in other boats, waiting for people to die so as to see them burn.

Varanasi is the city of Death, a city of filth, and a city of lies. It is a city of “holy” men, a city of beggars, of amputees and deformities, of Ganga-smoking hippies and mendicants, of loads of European and American tourists, of carcasses and entrails floating down the Ganges amdist the hundreds of daily bathers in the sewage-choked waters, of hawkers and swindlers, of street urchins and pilgrims, and of pimps and prostitutes of death.

“The boat ride will just be a nominal fee, maybe 120 rupees or so,” lied the man at the hotel.

The boat ride, at the dock, was quoted to me at 1500 rupees, though I paid significantly less since it became readily apparent that Raju, my ferryman, was out of shape and could not handle his oars, inter alia. I asked him ten minutes into the ride, after we had bumped a dozen other boats and nearly punctured a bloated corpse of a cow floating by with his oars, “Have you done this before? I mean, have you ever rowed this boat before this morning?” I asked him rather sardonically, not masking my annoyance.

“I will explain later,” he lied, somewhat sheepishly, not proffering an explanation while I was close enough to shore to jump ship.

As we plied our way down through the flotilla of tourist boats, or rather, as they passed us one by one, grazing us or us them due to Raju’s ineptness at the helm, I was able to let my initial annoyance subside as I realized it would serve no one any good. We headed upstream trailing the herd of dinghies to the small crematorium, which is primarily electric, though some traditional pyres are still used. Some time ago, the Prime Minister of India initiated a state-subsidized cremation service for the poor as people were wont to come to Varanasi to die in order for their corpses to be cast away into the river, to float downstream and become purified. In order to reduce the bobbing body count, this crematorium was constructed and for a truly nominal fee, one’s remains may be immolated along the sacred banks.

Just before the crematorium, there is a “holy man” school, which is the only modern building along the ghats, or “steps,” which all lead to the muddy, shitty, filthy banks. Outside, on the steps of the “holy man” school, young boys in saffron gowns are chanting in an awkward chorus line accompanied by two gurus with a guitar and tabla, chanting into a microphone, broadcasted out to the boats of gaping and aghast white people. Next to the chorus line, there is another “holy man” who is going through various gesticulations with a flaming trident, the sign of Shiva, an incense chalice, and various other gilded accoutrements. He is covered in ashes, presumably from the cremated bodies next door, his hair pinned up into a topnot and sporting a grungy, pointed beard. Pot-bellied and grinning foolishly from his Ganga “wake and bake” burn, looking rather non-Indian, and in fact, he looks suspiciously like a Jewish comic from New York as he clownishly waves to some of the people in the boats.

At this point, Raju, who is also slightly potbellied, unlike nearly all of the other trim boatsmen who had been cruising smoothly past us, takes a break as we turn around to head back downstream. Nota Bene, don’t hire a potbellied oarsman for an upstream boat tour.

He asks me to sit nearby to him, for his explanation. He amicably lies that one oar is weaker than the other, which explains his difficulties. The oars are identical. I used to row every morning for 6 miles on Town Lake in Austin, and had more than once been tempted to ask Raju if he wanted to swap places as he hit yet another “crab”. It was not in the oars.

He then complains about his boss and that he had just come in from New Dehli last evening and had to sleep in the boat. Having been in India now for two months, I know that nearly every word out of his mouth at this point is a lie to garner sympathy for money. He tells me not to be angry, to which I respond, “I am not angry, that would be a waste of energy. I was annoyed, but it’s not worth it, it changes nothing as I am already on the boat.”

He tells me some trivial facts about the ghats and the city. Some are urban legends that I have read about, others are blatantly misinformed, and some most likely have some truth to them. By now, we have drifted towards mid-stream as Raju has not touched the oars for some time, so after much effort, we manage our way back towards the bank into the slipstream.

Suddenly, having forgotten one of his lies, his evil boss turns out to be his uncle, who owns the boat, as well as a silk shop...I know where this is going. As we are drifting again downstream closer to the larger crematorium, where several cremations are in process, he is telling me about how his uncle’s place is much cheaper than retail stores. I smile and nod, feeling the annoyance creeping back under my skin. He then tells me about a customer from last night...er...last time he was on the boat. Another lie exposed, caught too late to rectify properly.

We pass the crematorium, turning back upstream, under much protest of Raju’s body fighting the oars. We pass close enough to see the stiffened feet sticking out from the pyres. Brown feet turning white, the smell of barbecued flesh rises. By ten, there will be many pyres lit as the mornings are for purity rituals, not Death. Raju assures me he can give me a special tour.

When we get back, Raju gives me his number so that he can show me around more later. He says that since I am a teacher, he will do it “free of charge.” He tells me again about his uncle’s store, bingo, I say, “I’m not interested in buying anything.” I have done my shopping in Madurai from people I came to know personally there. Raju’s face changes a bit, the “free of charge” and his amicability seem to fade from his face in an instant.

We sit and drink a chai from small, clay disposable cups. It is a good chai, though hard to enjoy without a measure of added guilt. All around, severely deformed people are asking for money. Theoretically it is illegal to beg in India now, however, people make exceptions for visibly deformed people and for the “holy men,” who, by the looks of many of them, are living up to the accusations of charlatanism and excuses to get high all of the time.

I see my cab from the hotel pull up. I give Raju several hundred rupees less for his overcharge and oversight about his ability to row this morning. I have also been here long enough to know that you never pay the full price quoted for white people, especially if the service is lacking. He is disappointed, but so was I at the beginning. It is a fair trade.

My cab driver had come back from the hotel. I had shared a ride from the hotel with two German men, who were only in Varanasi for a night and a morning. The entire time they were discussing money issues, so I had chosen to go alone on a boat instead of further sharing the cost with them, making it more expensive for me, but I had not wanted to listen to them bicker Teutonically for an hour and a half, which turned out to be two hours with Raju (which was fine, except for his constant protests about how “hard it was to row,” though I was the only boat with one person, being much lighter than all the rest). In Germany, prostitution is regulated by the government, so there are fixed prices, so they were expecting the same consistency in India I suppose. The Germans had returned sooner and did not want to wait, and the cabbie had gone back with them earlier, so it was just me on the way back to the hotel.

There is a long soup kitchen line along the main road away from the ghats. The cab driver told me that each morning, as part of doing morning oblations, a wealthy person can sponsor a giant caldron of the curry soup and rice for the poor who throng to the Man Mandir Ghat, the launching point for the grotesque ferry rides.

The cab driver asks me questions about my stay in Varanasi. At each thing that I mention, he says that he can drive me, for an enhanced fee of what it would cost me for the taxis that are just outside the gates of the hotel, and which I will be taking from now on. There is no interest in what I want to see, but rather, when I want to see it so that he can take me. I tell him I don’t have a phone, to give me his number and I will call.

I lied.

Lying is contagious here in Varanasi, the city where people go to die.

The city of pimps and prostitutes of Death, and I’m just another paying John.

Spot the Cow?

An effigy of Kali, goddess of Death from a Diwali festival

Spot the Tourists?

Small, state-subsidized crematorium

Large Crematorium