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Published: March 5th 2010
“Brace yourself. You’re about to enter one of the most blindingly colorful, unrelentingly chaotic and unapologetically indiscreet places on earth. Hindu pilgrims come to the ghats lining the Ganges River here to wash away a lifetime of sins in the sacred waters or cremate their loved ones. It’s a particularly auspicious place to die, since expiring here offers moshka (liberation from the cycle of life and death), making Varanasi the beating heart of the Hindu universe. Most visitors agree it’s a magical place, but the constant attention from touts and the intimate rituals of life and death that take place in public can be overwhelming. If you’re ready for it, though, this may turn out to be your favorite stop of all.”
And so went the introduction to Varanasi in my Lonely Planet guide book. The city did not disappoint. The moment I got off the train I was greeted by a young man politely pointing me in the direction of the exit. His yellow striped shirt made it apparent that he wasn’t a government employee, but he disappeared a moment later so I just chalked it up to a random act of stranger kindness. About thirty seconds after
walking in the direction he’d pointed me I saw a sign that said the way out was in the opposite direction, so I crossed the platform and started walking the other way. As I neared the end of the platform I realized it was a dead end and that the sign had been incorrect, so I turned around yet again. Standing ten feet away and coming in my direction was the stranger, clearly following me and ready to point me in the right direction. I immediately realized that he was not offering random acts of kindness but was in fact a rickshaw driver offering directional services in exchange for guilt-induced rides. When he saw me turning around without his help he disappeared amongst the crowd again. A couple minutes later I stopped at a set of stair cases to read the signs and determine which I should take in order to exit. The man appeared behind me immediately and spoke. “Madam,” he said, “the exit is this way,” and pointed to one of the staircases. Had he actually just been a nice guy I would have thanked him, but there was motive, and I didn’t. Being followed around is not
something I appreciate, and I’ve grown tired of people using every scheme in the book to attract tourists to buying whatever they’re trying to sell. This time he didn’t disappear again and stayed right on my tail, and within a few moments gave his spiel about the rickshaw. “I don’t need a rickshaw,” I said. “What, you walk?” he responded. “No, I’m going to the tourism office and will call my hotel from there. Thank you, but no.” “Ma’am, I give you very good price.” “No, I don’t want your rickshaw.” “Ma’am I have very cheap rickshaw and give you good price,” he stated again. “I-do-not-want-an-auto-rickshaw,” I responded more slowly and clearly, even though this wasn’t necessary in order for him to understand. He tried a fourth time and I rudely replied, “Look, I have this on my own. I don’t need you. Go away.” To this, he merely slowed enough to walk a foot behind but still follow me. When we got into the main part of the station he tapped on my shoulder and pointed me to the corner of the room that had a clearly marked “Tourism Office” sign. “Yeah, thanks,” I said sarcastically and wandered inside.
I actually did need to go to the tourism office, as I was interested in booking a tour and was told that this was the best method. After waiting for ten minutes for the agent to help a distressed European woman without even scanning the rest of the room, however, I decided that my obnoxious follower was probably gone and I could just work out the details of the tour with my hotel. I walked out of the train station and was immediately detained by four men, all of which yelled a variation of “Cheap price! Madam! Cheap price auto rickshaw!” I ignored them while scanning the parking lot. I spotted an old guy with a bicycle rickshaw fifty feet away and bee lined it toward him. I jumped on his carriage and he started to take off, despite the now five auto rickshaw drivers - including the one that had followed me - all surrounding the carriage and shouting ever lower prices.
The ride to my guest house proved to display the most insane traffic I’ve seen in India yet. The bazaars lining the streets, too, were overwhelming; seas of people on both sides of the road
shopped in makeshift stalls that hung everything from neon plastic toys and knock-off shoes and duffle bags to shiny silk scarves and everything in between. I was running short on luggage space and at one point jumped off, scored an “Adidas” duffle bag for $3, and continued on. Soon enough the crowd of shoppers became too thick and, even though they were on a road that should have been passable to vehicles, barred further traffic from going through. My rickshaw driver stopped his carriage, spoke to someone on the street, and told me to follow him to my hotel on foot. I was pack-heavy and slower than the man, so I almost lost him in the shopping mass a number of times. At one point he turned off the street and into what looked like a narrow alley. “Oh good,” I thought. “Almost there.” Wrong. What we turned into was the meat of the old city of Varanasi: a winding matrix of very narrow alleys teeming with vendors in every direction. It seemed like every twenty feet spawned a new alley, offering yet more shopping options as well as opportunities to get completely lost. At one point a guy carrying
cages of baby owls appeared and tried to get me to give him $3 to set one free. Amazed at what I was seeing, I took a picture but otherwise refused to support his business venture and departed. Unwilling to give up on the possible sell, his rows of cages followed me for some time while an echo of “Madam, set free! Just one hundred fifty rupees! Madam? Hellooo?” came along with them. Meanwhile my guide, always fifteen feet in front of me and bobbing in and out of the endless pedestrians, simply reached his arm over his head and pointed to signal the change in direction each time we entered a new alley. I felt like I’d entered The Labyrinth; I was half waiting for my escort and all the people to disappear, and to see David Bowie emerge from a musty corner to tell me that I’d lost little Toby forever. Fortunately, I was spared the Bowie mullet and arrived safely, albeit thoroughly confused, at my hotel.
That evening I decided to walk along the ghats and find the one that hosted the nightly riverside Aarti ceremony. I had gotten used to the singing, chanting, and
blessings that come along with the Aarti ceremony in Rishikesh, so I figured I’d check out Varanasi’s version. I walked past a line of limbless beggars, one of which had lost all ten digits on his hands and thus had only two outstretched palms, and came upon a place to sit and watch the show. While I was waiting I watched two goats ferociously butting heads over rights to a pile of garbage, and a couple minutes later the loser sauntered off while the victor enjoyed his well-earned prize. After a while two British girls also wanting to watch the ceremony came and sat next to me. Immediately after they sat down a child wandered over selling postcards. “Postcard, madam?” he said to me. I shook my head negatively in a way that works wonders. He then went on to the next girl and asked the same question. She, however, made the mistake of asking to look at them without being set on buying. After looking, she handed them back and said “No, thank you.” Then, like I have seen a thousand times already, he started over as though they’d had no previous encounter. “Postcard, madam?” he said while he
thumbed through the stack of cards. “No, I don’t want a post card,” she said. “Madam, postcard? Very cheap price!” and then waved the stack of cards in front of her again. “I said no, now give me space!” she said. “Madam, hellooo, postcard?” he continued. She’d made a rookie mistake, but knew nonetheless that the time had come to ignore him and look anywhere but the eight inches in front of her face that held the stack of waving postcards. So he just stood there and asked the same thing to her and her friend, over and over, with fresh enthusiasm each time as if perhaps one of them would perk up and say “Oh! Hello little boy! I didn’t see you standing there. What is it that I can purchase from you today?”
Fortunately for me, I was spared this charade. Something I’ve learned about Indian touts is that they must either be ignored altogether or responded to with the perfect combination of the half glance, half look-ahead while half shaking your head “no” all at the same time. In order to be maximally effective, this must be done with such confidence, precision, and carelessness that your
action clearly says: “Whatever, dude, I’ve done this a million times before and your proposal isn’t even worth me looking at you or shaking my head “no” all the way.” I have mastered this beautifully. India has given me a sort of callousness that I’ve lacked completely in my life until now. I’d been told repeatedly that I would need it in order to survive here, and was honestly a little worried about my ability to obtain it. Fortunately, a person can only endure encounters like the one described above so many times before they have to harden the heart and learn to be selective.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” one of the girls said to me after the boy finally left. “A country with this much wealth can allow its own children to beg and starve.” I thought that her solution of building more soup kitchens was a bit naïve, but she meant well. “You know,” the other girl said after sensing that I didn’t fully agree with the “give a man a fish” solution her friend proposed, “we were at a train station coming to Varanasi and we saw a little boy that we think was literally dying
of hunger. The child was totally decrepit and barely able to crawl. Everyone just walked past him as though he didn’t exist. When I gave him bread he looked afraid to eat. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen; we honestly think he was about to die.”
After the comparatively commercial Aarti ceremony I went back to my hotel and spent the night reflecting on my conversation with the girls and a more extensive remedy to the woes of the world’s poor than the one they offered. I recalled a book I read a few months ago by a British author living in India, and in it he discussed an old interview in which he was asked what he thought the key to solving the world's problems was. He’d replied that it was too loaded a question and that problems as diverse as poverty, illiteracy, civil and women’s rights issues, pollution, and global warming couldn’t be tackled by a single thing. After long deliberation and years of continued work reporting on things ranging from melting ice caps to slum kids in Mumbai, however, he has changed his tune and come up with an answer. The biggest “bang
for the buck” in beginning to solve all of the world’s major problems, he decided, lay in one thing: educating girls.
In developing countries girls are consistently overlooked in education and social systems. Boys are considered more economically viable, so if a family is able to send even one child to school and has to chose between a son and daughter, they will choose the son nearly 100% of the time. The problem here is that boys, unlike girls, are not the watcher of the family or the fabric of the community. When a boy is educated his job prospects are certainly enhanced, but money goes directly to his immediate family, and often surpluses go directly to himself. An educated male child will likely ensure that his future sons are educated, but if he has an illiterate wife and a family history of illiterate women, then his daughters will have extremely weak chances of breaking the cycle. If a girl is educated, however, she is likely to produce a full family of educated children. A grown educated woman then too becomes an economic force and can contribute financially in more diverse ways than if she were illiterate. Extra income
can be invested in the community, and she has more options should her relationship or living situation become dangerous.
I've since done more research on this topic and it seems that many experts agree that educating girls is a key first step. Additionally, the statistics on the increase in quality of life and community health and the subsequent decrease in infant mortality rates and other poverty-related problems when women become educated are astounding. I ultimately drifted off to sleep that night pondering ways that I, as a lone American citizen, can further this cause that I’m increasingly becoming enthralled with.
I spent next the day on a private tour of the city, which included the run-of-the-mill sights such as local museums, temples, and palaces. In a cool change of pace, however, we also went to the nearby city of Sarnath to see the famous spot in which the Buddha gave his first sermon. A small temple was built a hundred years ago to mark the spot, and I sat for a while underneath a tree next to it while trying to absorb the magnitude of the moment. Unfortunately, a group of rowdy teenage boys behind me weren’t
feeling as reverent, so I gave up and departed back to my jeep for the return trip to my hotel.
By the time I got back to Varanasi I was famished, and decided I would set out to find a German bakery that Lonely Planet described as being the best restaurant in the city. With extreme luck it turned out that this magical place was less than a two minute walk from my hotel. I walked inside to find a menu including twenty different cheese platters to choose from as well as extensive Italian, Chinese, and Indian options. Anyone that knows me is aware of my undying and certainly unhealthy love of cheeses and the various platters on which they come, so I was in heaven. Plus they had local live music every night, and it turned out that the restaurant also leads the way in social and environmental responsibility in Varanasi and helps run a non-profit organization for poor kids through the proceeds of the restaurant. Concerts, cheese, AND charity? Needless to say, I ate all of my meals at this establishment for the remainder of my stay.
Side note - the internet cafe is closing. Part
two of this lovely saga will be posted in the morning.
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Lonna
non-member comment
WOW!
I'm lovin it all the more...keep them blogs a comin'.