Stepping back to the days before leaving Jaipur: Our time in Jaipur was made wonderful by having met the most amazing family of young men who were our drivers. Suki introduced us to them and she is absolutely correct, they are the best and such nice people. Their grandfather was the elephant trainer for the Royal Family that owns the Diggi Palace haveli once upon a time. Then their father worked for the family and after he died, the oldest son, Mesu began to work for them as they turned the home into the hotel when he was 14.
While we were there, the brothers took us to great out of the way places; taught us lessons and made us all laugh and smile.
What made our stay there was last evening; Mesu asked if we would come to his home to have chai tea with his family. I had asked if I could make a portrait of the family and his brothers at some point that day. So, between other things, they assembled and I did a group shot of the brothers and then while over at Mesu’s home, we shot the family. But then unexpectedly, Mesu’s wife made us dinner of these most delicious vegetables and fresh chapatti. What a delight! We ate the best meal we had all the time in Jaipur.
You know travel is not about architecture, grand sights, or historic tours. It is really only good when it is about the people. And as Mesu said as he dropped us at the airport, “You never say goodbye, you always say ‘See you’ and then you will return again.” What a big-hearted man! What a wonderful family!
We watched the celebration of Holi begin with the Elephant Festival, and better was what we encountered on the way home from there. During the day, the women of the neighborhood where the haveli was located created a large grass tower that was woven together with string and pieces of cloth from what looked like their saris. As we drove past we noticed that the women from the surrounding neighborhood had assembled and were just beginning to make offerings at the tower and light candles. We were told that they do this to rid themselves of whatever bad happened during the past year and to bring in Holi with good. They chanted, smiled, hugged and placed red pigment on each other’s foreheads. I got to photograph within the women’s group. Keith photographed from the outside of the group near where the men were watching and getting ready to participate by lighting the whole tower on fire. It was an amazing sight and ceremony.
An unspeakably sad thing happened that day before we left, just before I made the portrait – one of Mesu’s friends called him while we were out at a jeweler’s shop and he had to run to the hospital. He arranged for another brother, Tabu, to come get us. Their friend’s wife was working at her husband’s shop/market stall and he was in the outdoor part and she was inside. Somehow, her sari veil got blown up into the ceiling fan and she was hanged by it and died. They had been married one year and two days and had just been celebrating with the brothers for their anniversary. Life and death takes on a different meaning it seems in this culture. I am not sure, but they all seemed resigned to the news of her death. They said she was with God now. They were sad but did not take the news like we do at home.
Wed, March 3
Varanasi
After we got settled into the guest house, we rested a short while and then walked the river front ghats. The sky was cloudy and weather warm. We photographed some but neither of us felt we did a great job. This time we went down further than we had ventured last time. Our guest house is not fancy but seems to be fine. It is right on the river between the main ghat and the big cremation ghat or burning ghat. From the roof you can see the Brahman priests put the river to sleep at sundown.
Our door.
Men having their heads shaved for a cremation of a loved one.
The view is not as good as when you are out on the river but tonight we just were not up for that. Our room is at the top of the guest house and has a small semi-private balcony just outside our door. The restaurant here is not much so I guess we will eat elsewhere. We have to decide how we will spend our time here. I think I spotted some widows this evening. I am interested in just observing and photographing from a bit of a distance here. We are here for long enough to get more into the groove of it.
It is nearly a week that we have been in Varanasi now.
I thought this place was magic and in some ways it might be but my feelings have changed with all of the hustle - all of the constant hawking of everything. You think that someone is finally not putting the “Benares scam” on you and they turn out to be one of those annoying and miserable individuals who see only dollar signs and not you. This zaps the magic and spirituality right out of the air.
This is supposed to be the holiest of the holy places for the Hindu, but everywhere people are selling their holiness for cold hard cash. Children begin to work the streets from the time they can talk. Parents send them out to beg or sell useless things to the tourists who don’t want the stuff but are urged to feel sorry or compassion for a scam.
So we were at one of the burning ghats to witness the amazing way the life and death cycle is played out. This man who came to warn us not to photograph began to talk to us and said he worked for the ghat because it was in his family. He would explain the rituals but he was not a guide, he was not selling us anything. He was forthcoming with lots of information about who was cremated, on the ghat, whose remains were weighted down and placed in the river, and whose remains were not allowed on the ghat. We asked some questions but for a long time did not feel the scam coming. I needed to sit down. It was the day after my big belly/intestinal issue. So that is when he began wanting us to donate money for the wood for the poor but we could give it to him, we could give it to him there on the ghat or walk up to the silk factory with him to buy something, change money and then give him the donation. He was a disguised silk salesman or one who got commissions from the silk emporiums and probably was not a ghat worker. Keith gave him nothing and explained when we wanted to donate, we wanted to be sure it went to the real organization that charitably helped people not to someone we met on the ghat. The man was not happy with Keith but continued to press him. Keith used my need to go sit down to get away. Then the man began on someone else.
Then there was the boatman who Keith had talked to on the ghats and had a pleasant conversation. He explained that I was ill that day and that when I was feeling better, we would go for a boat ride to see the sunset and the river ceremony. He was not the man Keith had gone out with the night I was too ill to go. This guy had talked about a price but when we found him last night, that price had vanished once we got onto the boat. He was still being nice then and told how he would get 350-450 rupees per hour from rich people staying at the Taj but since he was our friend and had asked us to come out a few days before, we could pay him whatever we felt he deserved. He would take us on a long slow ride since it was still very early for the ceremony and we would see both ends of the ghat and the other side of the river. (Every morning the river is awakened by prayers and bathing rituals. Every night there is a ceremony that puts the river to sleep.)
But first, his daughter was coming to bring us the little banana leaf bowls filled with flowers and a candle for a good luck wish and money. She arrived and we were asked how many children we had.
“None” was his magic word to decide we were now wealthy since we had no children to be responsible for. The order of these events might be wrong but the talk of cost was still a moving target as we took the ride. From time to time he would begin a conversation with the fact that he was rowing a rented boat and one day he would have enough saved to buy his own. He was able to accumulate about 10,000 rupees in the bank now and needed to have the equivalent of $2000 US dollars to get his boat that was a bit better than the ramshackle one we were in. Oh, and there was his younger daughter just up there on the ghat selling postcards and henna. Oh, and he was going to have to pay for three weddings since he had three daughters and since we had no children, he could be our child. He was not a young man. He took up way up close to the bridge where the train passes and did not get us back to the beginning of ceremony on time. He did not take us down to the other end of the river or across to the other side. He did go slowly. He did not try to position us so we could photograph as he promised. His hustle was on. So when the ceremony as half over we arrived and made some photographs, but he was not careful with the boat and we were rammed a number of times by other boatmen trying to move their customers into closer range. I finally felt unsafe, so I asked Keith if we could go ashore. Keith had determined he would help this man and give him 500 rupees, which was more than he paid before by 300 rupees for the longer better trip he had two nights before. When he gave the boatman the money after I was off the boat and he was on the bow, the boatman told him that that money was for the boat rental but what was Keith going to do to help him buy his new boat? Keith said that money was for all of that but the boatman insisted that it was not enough. To get rid of him, Keith finally gave him some more but let him know that he was not happy with the scam. Keith thought: our karma would be good but his would not since he was not honest with us, as he had said.
However, the sunset was gorgeous, the sites along the river were fascinating, and the ride was mostly peaceful.
We went up to eat and both of us stewed about this for a while. We were really feeling like it is time to leave this town. We don’t have a train for 2 more days. If it weren’t so hard to change a booking of a train sleeper, we would leave today.
Earlier in the day, we went to the Benares (old name for Varanasi) Hindu University by auto-rickshaw to the see the museum. We got this driver who we argued with for a price. He was like a madman driving but got us to the museum and we thought we would just grab another to get back. He insisted on waiting for us and would not accept our money for the ride there. While we were in the museum, he napped. On the way home, emboldened by his rest, he showed us how his rickshaw was new and had this horn that sounded like a car horn not the usual for a rickshaw. I guess there is an unspoken hierarchy for who gets to go first by the sound of the horn. Anyway, he honked it all the way back laughing and smiling at his good fortune. He amused himself by brushing his vehicle against walkers but not enough to hurt them when they would not move over enough to let him through. When we returned back to the old town, Keith gave him a round trip for 300 and 100 more rupees or so for a tip and then the man asked for the most unusual thing. He wanted us to each kiss him on the cheeks of his face. Poor Keith was first and was not sure what the man wanted as he kept putting his cheek up to Keith’s face and pointing at it. He must have thought we were Europeans and that is how they said hello and good-bye. As we got out of his rickshaw, we laughed all the way back.
We attempted to find more Hindu god finger puppets in the toy market part of the lanes in the old town. No luck. This might be an item only found in American markets on line. We have gotten lost in the old town lanes so often; it is now a habit. There are no lane signs or markers only ads for this or that emporium. Those lanes are very narrow and are filled with people, bicycles, motorcycles and animals (mostly cows and water buffalo). Every once in a while, a cow gets spooked and begins to run so people hop out of its way. Yesterday, one came up on Keith from behind and snotted up his shirt with its nose.
Imagine your own town being scattered with freely wandering cattle, goats, chickens, wild boar-looking pigs, dogs and monkeys. Imagine then, one of those big cows laying down right in the middle of the road and not worrying a bit. Imagine a crowded sidewalk littered with dogs sleeping off the afternoon heat and having to climb over them. Imagine having to watch your every step so as not to land in a cow pile or dog poop or a hole in the walkway. And image having to do this while motorcycles or bicycles are whizzing along with their horn screeching. Imagine people all trying to get by each other in this mix of movement. Welcome to the world of traveler in India. No one who lives here thinks it odd.
The cow poop is collected and dried out and used for fuel for heating, or cooking. It is sold in neatly formed rings. Cow poop really does not smell bad, it is mostly grass or whatever cows can forage to eat. It’s the dog poop that is a problem. This is a very indiscreet place. Cleanliness is relative. It is a place where the streets and walkways are constantly being swept, but really only to the pile somewhere along the edge where the animals forage through it and drag it out to the center again. Every once in a while the piles are collected and carted to another location.
We have renamed one of the ghats, the Pee Ghat. For some reason, every time we walk by this one spot, men are peeing there. It does stink; so this must be an historic pee zone thus our new name. If you were not aware, local men pee outdoors in public here all the time. They have their backs to you but there is no mistaking what is going on. I wonder where women pee.
We have also watched people bathing in the river. Women bathe in their sarees and do not expose themselves. Men strip down to what passes for underwear, soap up and scrub with no hint of self-consciousness. The river Ganges is holy and sacred and washing away the dirt, washes also the sins. However, as one tourist from Zimbabwe asked another tourist at the burning ghat, “How can the river be clean when all those bodies are in it from burial, cremation and all the sewage?” He also wanted to know why people went into and drank from the river with those circumstances. Good Question.
There is a movement to clean the Ganges. My guess is that tradition and habit will hamper most efforts to clean it. For thousands of years throughout the generations, this river has been used like it is today. My feeling is that nothing is going to change. But would you eat fish out of this river? Not me.
March 7
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