Varanasi - girl

“Boat, sir? Boat? One hour, good price”. Sadly, that may well be the lingering memory of this fascinating, strange riviera-esq town. I may remember that chant more than seeing burning bodies, more than the crusty hippies, more than the mean hotel manager, more than being in a (minor) rickshaw crash and more than the actual boat rides themselves.

We arrived at the station after a long and slow train journey from Agra. I was exhausted and really having to work hard to not be pissed off with everything in the entire world, ever. And then I saw the most skeletal child I have ever seen and all my annoyances and minor irritations were swept away. I have no idea how old he might have been - somewhere between 11 and 17 I would guess. He sat down not far from us and devoured a packet of biscuits. I bought him a cup of hot, sweet, tea. I saw a skeletal child and I bought him a cup of fucking tea. Nothing more. My heart broke and I bought him tea. What else could I have done? Money? Everything I believe about the ‘greater development’ picture tells me not to give kids money. Some kids deliberately keep themselves looking ill as it elicits more sympathy, which translates to hard cash. I can’t believe this was deliberate though. So what it boils down to is a cup of fucking tea.

I’m torn: on the one hand, helping one life is helping the world, on the other, development and change are not about the individual but the whole. There’s no easy answer. One question I do find easy to answer concerns begging sadus, or holy men. I’m not interested in propagating religion or the idea that begging is acceptable in the name of religion. So no money to the guys in yellow from me. Interesting to consider that although 4/5ths of India is now claimed to live above the poverty line, many live in the conditions we see here in Varanasi, conditions worse than I have seen in many places where people are living below a ‘poverty line’.

Varanasi is considered particularly holy to Hindus - something to do with the Ganges here, confluence of something or other. What this means in reality is shed loads of Indian pilgrims and tourists all taking a swim, washing, pee-ing in the great river. It also deals with dead bodies, human waste (33 sewage pipes go directly into the river from which people then drink), washing suds and water buffalo. Yum, one great big polluted soup of a river. We took a couple of boat rides on it and watching people perform almost all of their daily rituals at the riverside was just fascinating. There was no compunction about defecating at the side and then wiping oneself in public, no qualm about getting almost totally naked and jumping in the river and certainly no worry about drinking the water. I’m sure the people of Varanasi must be super humans to survive.

We stopped a few times to watch the cremation ghat activities - here the process is: ceremony through the town with the dead body on a stretcher; chuck it in the river until it’s truly soaked and then put it on a big bonfire with logs on top to prevent it sitting up when gases are released. In four days we saw lots of processions, lots of chucking in the water and lots of bonfires but very few burning bodies (just three of these, in fact). It was less interesting than I thought it might be but certainly it’s surreal to see the shroud burn and suddenly be faced with a human on fire.

Oh yeah, and a cow headbutted me, which was quite funny.