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Published: February 17th 2012
Train Rider
How Mom rides the train: All business.Namaste – and a disclaimer, this is not a blog entry for the squeamish as it involves death in a very real context!
Varanasi – when I think of this place, I think of a city that embodies the Indian spirit to the utmost; the spiritual energy, the noise, the smells, the cows... it truly is a place that captures every essence of India in one place and displays it in all its glory. I was thrilled to go back there and experience everything all over again, bearing in mind of course that it may not be the same as when I was there last time, and of course it wasn't; nothing ever is the same twice. But it was equally as beautiful, moving and humbling as ever and I fell in love with the holy city all over again.
The journey started out on a bit of a frantic and scrambled note as I realized the morning of the day we were leaving Orchha that we actually should have been on a train the night before – oops! You have to book trains insanely far in advance because they get sold out so quickly,
Train Rider 2
How I ride the train: No business whatsoever. so we were running from internet cafe to internet cafe, travel agent to travel agent, trying to get seats for us on that evening's train. Miraculously, we found two empty seats, one in first class and one in second class, so being the ever-loving daughter I insisted Mom go in first class and we had a pretty comfy ride from Orchha to Varanasi, arriving in the a.m. to a super busy train station and crowds of rickshaw drivers vying for our business. I knew exactly where I was going – Assi Ghat, to Ashish Cafe and Guesthouse, where I stayed last time and which has the best food in the entire city (I have been talking about the cook. Lalu's, food since I came here last time, and I am happy to report that his thali and veg soup are as delicious as ever – Mom was very happy!). We arrived and luckily they had room available for us so we unpacked and settled in for a couple days of Varanasi vibes.
Like I have mentioned before, Varanasi is the holiest city for Hindus and is where many come to be cremated and have their ashes placed
Tea Stall Dance
One of the cutest things I've ever seen - two toddlers dancing together in a little nook of a tea stall in the Ganges. The story of the Ganges is another amazing one – apparently, all the people on earth were having a drought or some sort of water shortage, and they prayed to Shiva to bring them water. Shiva called upon Ganga, the mother goddess, to come down in a river form and supply the people with water. Ganga was busy with some sort of business that female deities do (whatever that entails) and said no, she was otherwise indisposed and couldn't do it. But no one can really say no to Shiva, apparently, and so he worked his Shiva magic and insisted she bring water to the people. Ganga was understandably annoyed and said “Oh yeah? Well if you're going to make me come, I am going to come down so hard and fast and strong that I will destroy everything in my path!”. Obviously, this would defeat Shiva's purpose of helping people in need, so he responded “Well fine then, I will tangle you up in my hair so that it slows you down and you won't be ABLE to destroy anything!”. So as Ganga descended to earth, Shiva twisted her up in his dreadlocks and slowed her
Straight Chillin
Cows at the Ghats raging torrents down to a nice easy flow, and the people of earth were saved!
I worry sometimes that after spending so much time in India, I am becoming a bit jaded and have ceased to be shocked or amazed by anything anymore – I have seen and experienced so much here that I am left wondering what could I POSSIBLY have yet to see? Well, thankfully Varanasi, who comes to the rescue with the surreal, the improbable, and the marvellous, allowed me to see and experience things that were completely new to me, yet again. Mom and I had dropped our things off at Ashish's and were walking down the ghats towards the main and cremation ghats so I could show her a little piece of the city. We had stopped at the smaller burning ghat so I could show her the process of cremation, having been there before and being told by one of the workers how it is done (she had visited a crematorium in Amritsar with the cycle-rickshaw guide and so wasn't entirely new to the sights and smells and feeling of a cremation area). We were just sitting there, quietly observing the
solemn, centuries-old ritual, when one of the workers started to rearrange the one of the bodies on its pyre with two poles – something that of course must be done, but he was going about it so zealously that he actually was flipping the torso and head of the body around in the air as if it were cooking something like a pancake (I am so sorry for the description and I am meaning absolutely no disrespect to the individual or the family, but that is the only way I can think to describe it). I thought I had seen everything, but this was an uncomfortable (and very real, and very honest) reminder of my own mortality and while it was shocking and difficult to witness it brought home again why I love Varanasi so much – it is an honest place, a no-secrets place, a place where every aspect of life and death is unhidden and enacted along the shores of this beautiful, holy river. Later, upon seeing a body floating down the river with a bird perched on its back, I was much less thrown and was able to appreciate again the unafraid and matter-of-fact approach to death
Dosa!
The best find I made in the alleys of Varanasi that this city and its inhabitants take.
As I stood there and watched, a wandering cow peed on me, juxtaposing the serious and spiritual with the hilarious and absurd, and I was acutely aware of the way life brings the ups and downs, reminding us that just when we think things cannot get any worse, they do, and that there is always some humour to be found in any situation, at any time, ever.
Our days in Varanasi were of course busy and filled with lots of wandering, chai-drinking, eating Lalu's delicious food at our guesthouse, and fending off sales-children selling us small trinkets along the ghats (I was not immune to one beautiful little girl, however, and she managed to sell me a small box of little bottles of coloured powders used at the festival Holi to throw at people – as I am leaving India about a week before Holi, I am open to suggestions on what to do with my colours!). I met a really wonderful Israeli named Tomas on the rooftop at Ashish's and went with him to an amazing classical music concert at his sitar instructor's studio and shared
Evening Puja
The BIG, main-show puja at the ghats in Varanasi! some wonderfully intimate conversations with him (Awkward: Mom reminding me before she went to bed and left the two of us talking on the roof that I'm not on the pill anymore - hahaha! She needn't have worried.). Israelis get a bit of a bad rap and I don't like to generalize about an ENTIRE country's inhabitants, but they do seem to spend much of their post-army months smoking chillum and listening to trance music, but Tomas was so lovely that he managed to shatter any preconceptions I may have had about Israelis in India (he actually told me that the key is finding an Israeli travelling alone, not in a pack – they tend to be the coolest). As I left we both said we wished we had more time to spend together but I am pretty confident that we'll bump into each other again at some point in the future – life has a way of bringing about amazing coincidences like that, an insane example of which was when I ran into Jitka, another volunteer from SBT, sitting on the ghats in Varanasi my first afternoon there, 3 months after we had met in Delhi!
Kali
The goddess herself, in Varanasi Our train from Varanasi to Kolkata was 6 or so hours late, meaning that instead of 2 full days in the city we only had about a day and a bit, unfortunately, since I had heard from SO many people how cool and interesting the city is, but we did have plenty of time to eat many kathi rolls (stir-fried veggies (or kebab meat for all you non-vegetarians out there!) with spicy sauce and lime juice rolled up in a hot and buttery naan bread... out of control good) and hang out in bookshops. A serious highlight and crazy experience was taking the Metro (India's first!) down to Kalighat in the south of the city, a very ancient worshipping place for the goddess Kali (you will recall my story about her from an earlier blog); actually, the story goes that Shiva's wife Sita died and he went nuts and danced around with her dead body in a grieving frenzy until Vishnu put a stop to his antics and chopped her body up into a bunch of pieces, scattering them around the country – where her little toe fell is now the site of the Kali temple and is how Kolkata got its name (it is loosely translated as “place of Kali”). Wow, two Hindu stories in this blog, you're lucky!
Anyways, this temple was in stark and serious contrast to any temple we had visited thus far, mainly due to the fact that Kali is a bloodthirsty goddess who must be appeased by blood rather than coconuts and flowers (although these are readily available for offering at the temple as well, for the less-hardcore). Apparently back in the day, human sacrifices used to be performed at this temple, but now the practice has been abolished and instead it is the adorable and sweet little goats who meet their demise in the name of devotion. According to the priest who helped us brave the crowded masses of people straining to get inside the temple, the goat symbolizes evil (though I cannot imagine why, as they are so cute) and families who are experiencing negativity in their lives or are having problems will buy a goat to sacrifice at the temple – and witnessing it was just... wow. Like nothing I've ever seen before. The priest blesses the sharpened knife blade, another man drums, one man holds the goats body and another its head, stretching its neck over the chopping block. The drumming and singing reaches a deafening pitch as everyone begins to shout and the blade is brought down swiftly, the body of the goat being thrown into the corner of the sacrifice area and the head being taken elsewhere. It all happened so quickly that I barely had time to react before being pulled away by our priest/guide, who literally manhandled and shoved people in line to get us into the temple (he kept saying “I will try my level best, I will try my level best”, because it was really crowded, Mom and I having terrible luck (recall the madness at the Durga temple in Mysore) and apparently choose to visit temples on only the most hectic days) to view a monolithic image of Kali, which was basically a black stone with three orange eyes painted on it that was supposed to represent the concept of Kali rather than actually depicting a physical form of her – an interesting idea, much like the Shiva lingam.
We got our red thread bracelets and put rings on a tree and made prayers (after insisting to the priest/guide that I truly, truly, cross-my-heart PROMISE did not want to pray for either a husband or a baby at this point in my life) before winding our way out of the temple complex, our bare feet stepping in goats' blood and hair and crushed flowers and bits of coconut husk (all brought as offerings to the insatiable Kali) and heading back to our guesthouse to wash our feet numerous times. I was again impressed at how well Mom handled herself at this dark, fascinating place, since she reeeeeeeally hates walking around barefoot and especially hates walking around barefoot at temples where they perform animal sacrifices (I must mention that the families to take the goats to be butchered after the sacrifice, so at least the meat does not go to waste). It was one of the most intense temple visits I have ever had and it amazes me that these rituals, that we may read about or see on TV or in film or wherever, are still being played out in temples all the time. It was almost unreal, and really amazing to be a witness to it.
Thus ended our brief time in Kolkata – 30 hours, three kathi rolls and one goat sacrifice later, we were back on an overnight sleeper train, this time to Darjeeling to sample some of the world's finest tea.... stay tuned for that one, and MUCH love from Hindustan!!!!
xoxoxoxoxoxo Shannon
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kaipnumestisvorio
non-member comment
great
great story and great pictures! thanks :)