[JPM Travel Journals] INDIA and NEPAL 01 Intro to India Holi Holy Vrindaban The Sadhu in Taj's Shadow Pushkar's Respite A Sitar & a Vespa in Udaipur The Clean-Bombing of Mumbai Goa Beach Hippie Sighting Tours Unequal Vision in Benares Everest, Out the Window Into Their Thin Air Anna Purr Now Within You Without You Rishikesh Part 2 Amritsar: Bold, Gold His Holiness of Dangerous Liasons Delhi Visit #5 New Delhi Turns to New York [ PHOTO ARCHIVE ]

Unequal Vision in Benares 10 April 01 Benares (Varanasi), India. Two day train from Bombay across India to Varanasi. A thirty hour blur. Little english spoken the whole time; I was the only foreigner. And after so long in the stale A/C of the 2-tier carriages, stepping out into Varanasi was a burning afternoon experience. Early morning, Pilgrims in the Ganga. My room is just off the Ganges river, at Modern Vision Guesthouse. (well, almost 'Equal Vision') It's three floors up, quite an eccentric place with the drifting ebbs of sitar and tabla and chanting and clothes washing and little children echoing. It's a family place: The seventeen year old daughter blushes and her cheekbones protude further as she slouches in her white cotton slip-dress when I walk in or out any doors. Then she re-buries her nose in a Hindi book, reading outloud, pretending not to be watching. The twenty year old daughter constantly offers me Hindi lessons, and the oldest, twenty-two, doesn't say much but comes out of the kitchen with food or drinks on suggestion or assumption. Sometimes I just sit in the sky-lit foyer in a shabby plastic chair next to the father. We smile at each other, long pauses between simple sentences, and he idly plays with the white cotton brahmin thread draped over his shoulder. Been here for two nights so far. This place is unbelievable, I repeat, Unbelievable. The first night I was here I saw three cremations, down on the Ganges banks. The frail body was doused in the holy Ganges then stacked with the wood in a pretty pyre, set ablaze and burning into the night. Actually, the first time I've been to a funeral. I only realized this half an hour into it. A damn comforting realization: initiated into the aspects of funerary rites in a much more honest, real ceremony than the cold, removed West. Carry my body away like this, please. I'm not just being obnoxious or rebellious to say that I think I'd prefer to have my lifeless body torched on a pile of sticks and pushed out to sea, like the vikings, or dispensed here while the kids rollerskate around or play cricket and the Untouchables stand by in their torn t-shirts adding logs to the fire. Respectfully I was trying to keep my distance, but it was difficult, the desire to get close and see what this was-- a most holy of ceremonies, as macabre and mystical as it is. To see a body on fire like that, the bones coming through, the smoke coming off the flesh. Limbs falling off, burnt, or the attendant swinging a big heavy stick down to crack the bones and fold the body up more efficiently onto the consuming flames. Insane, but so sane. I've yet to take the morning (sunrise) Ganges boat ride, where the odd corpse is known to be floating by. Rooftops of Varanasi. Apparently (and forgive me for divulging the offical Lonely Planet data-dogma) the bacterial/foecal count in the Ganges here is 250,000 times the safe limit. But this doesnt stop the Chai-wallah tea stalls from washing and rinsing their chai glasses in the Ganges waters. Obviously, I try to eat and drink a little further inland; being half-dead in a bed staring at a ceiling fan for a week straight with a mind-blown fever is not high on my list of desires. But how badly I wish I could immerse myself here in the holy river, knowing I cannot, despite the blistering heat, the looming spiritual spectre of descending into the water where the pilgrims are all slurping, splashing, singing, and washing away their sins. It's just not the same with my faulty shower spicket in my crude stone washroom at the guesthouse. I'm tring to focus on the sitar lessons, as well as absorbing the fantastical display of humanity and cinematic culture around me. After writing this I'm heading into the thick of town (out of the alleyway mazes of the ghat edges) back to a sitar workshop where I will spell out the instructions for my sitar constructions, customized with case and strings and all the extras. I've found a new teacher here in Benares and am restarting my lessons this afternoon. I've met some others that are also learning here, and it seems to be a very good thing. Sitar Baba, but not my Sitar Baba. (Wouldn't teach me because I didn't buy a sitar there.) I've heard of these restaurants that advertise 'Ravi Shankar Tonight!' and one goes there and sure enough, Ravi Shankar is banging away on the sitar-- live on the cd player. Hey, it's a seventy-five cent Thali. What do you expect? Never a dull Storefront. I want to stay here long enough to get some intense lessons and practice on the sitar, but Nepal is calling me. I'm only a few hours from the border. The trekking season starts to decline in about a month, so I want to be there with time to spare for nice weather and views of Annapurna, Everest, et al. I'm also considering coming back into India, and going to Himchal Pradesh, and maybe going to Darjeeling, where the scenery is supposed to be absolutely exhilerating-- and the temperatures a little more bearable. Got word from a friend this morning in China that there might be some cool teaching work in Shanghai or thereabouts. Hmmm. Need to investigate further the Berlin ideas, too. Achaya. My hour is up. Must escape to breakfast, chai, exchange money, and walk to the sitar workshop. Everest, Out the Window >> ©2001 JPM. All photography and writing copyrighted.