Part 2: Poverty’s woes, charred human toes, and slithering foes: Come one, come all, to the Varanasi circus.

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As I opened the glass panels of my window to watch the sun set that evening I was startled by a fat, wrinkly lizard sitting upside down on my screen. At first I was calmed by the fact that he was out and I was in, but then my eyes adjusted and I realized that both of us were in, and had he been able to hop off the screen he would have landed on the tile floor of my room. “Ohhkay, I’ll just close this window slowly…no sudden movements…and then there will be a barrier between me and the wrinkly fat man,” I thought. After doing so I felt assured that he would return from whence he came and would be gone in the morning. A couple hours later I got into bed and turned off the light. I laid there in the dark for a moment, examining the possibilities of Varanasi activities I could embark on the next day, when I saw it. With Tali-like precision I sensed him in the dark moving onto the front of my air conditioning unit. “There’s an animal on that air conditioner, I know it,” I thought, and scrambled across the bed to switch on the light. My fears were confirmed; there was another lizard sitting there, lounged on the cooling contraption above the foot of my bed. He wasn’t as big as the first one, but I didn’t care. “So,” I thought, “there’s a lizard in my room that may or may not want to kill me.” Then I rationalized a bit. “C’mon, Kace, It’s a lizard. Who cares? You love camping and dig animals. Its not a Komodo Dragon or anything…it’s a lizard. Lizards are cute. What are you so freaked out about?” But the fact that I’d seen two slithering animals in my quarters within two hours made me extremely nervous about waking to unpleasant circumstances. “I could get the hotel desk to get him,” I thought, before immediately reassessing the option. “First, they’re going to laugh at me for being such a dumb girl and I’m going to feel even more embarrassed over this ridiculous request. Then they’re going to come into my messy room, stand on my bed and try, probably fruitlessly, to catch a really fast lizard. And I’m already in my PJ’s. Plus, what if they do catch him and then kill the poor guy?” I decided against it.
With that option out, I had to cope with the fact that my new companion was there to stay. I tried repeatedly to push the mental images of waking to a lizard half inside my mouth or squished between my toes out of my mind, and decided that personification might be helpful in making him less scary. “Um, Henry,” I said in an insecure voice, “Can we have a little chat? I’d like you to know that there’s a very grumpy front desk man that might kill you should I call him into this room.” I paused for a moment to let this sink in. “How about we make a deal that you stay up there and come no where near my bed or the flip flops that I wear at night when I go potty. As long as we are thoroughly separated, I feel like there should be no reason that we can’t amicably share this room. What do you think? Sound good?” I waited in silence for a moment. “Okay, I’ll take your inability to vocally confirm as a ‘yes’,” I said, and, after deciding not to take chances of toe-squishing, put my flip-flops next to me on the bed and shut off the lights. I fell asleep sometime later after chastising myself repeatedly for somehow turning into a teenaged valley girl.
I awoke to find a missing Henry, and laughed at myself while recalling the episode. When I got out of the shower twenty minutes later he was back, and I realized in the light of day that he, like most lizards, was actually really cute. “Good morning, Henry!” I said cheerfully. “Thank you for not crawling into my mouth last night!” He seemed uninterested and slowly crawled out of view.


A few hours later I arrived at the Baba School of Music for a flute lesson I’d scheduled the day before. My patient Nepali instructor tried valiantly to get me to be a successful novice flute player, but he didn’t have much to work with. After having to repeatedly find new flutes to fit my tiny fingers, realizing that I have a complete inability to follow musical instruction, and tiring of the deafening noises coming from my instrument, I gave up. Plus I was laughing pretty much the whole time. “How about you just play for a while?” I said repeatedly. But he wouldn’t cave. “Again…do re mi fa so la ti do!”
To my delight, Ravi, the chatty owner of the music school eventually wandered in to watch the lesson. “Suwheet!” I thought, “An out!” Immediately I started conversing with him. “So, how long have you been running this school?” I began. Through conversation he quickly learned that I felt I was a lost cause in the flute arena and would rather spend the remainder of my hour just chatting, so he obliged. After a while it came up that in addition to the music school he also ran another school. “Another music school?” I asked. “No, I run a free school in a village outside Varanasi for poor children,” he said. “Ehhh…really?” I replied, amazed at the coincidence. “Can you tell me more about that?” Delighted at my interest, he told me that he currently has ten children he provides for. This consists of everything needed to provide a successful education, including clothes, breakfast, lunch, school supplies, instruments, playground equipment, sponsorship for higher education and even a doctor for them and their families. They come in every morning and do yoga and meditation, and throughout the day have lessons in math, science, Hindi, English, and the arts. The food, he says, is of exceptionally high quality and is prepared by a cook he has on staff. He said that they plan to acquire land next to the school so the kids can grow much of their own food in the future, but for now its not an option.
“How is this possible?” I asked, “Do the families contribute in any way?” “Aside from making the sacrifice of pulling their children from whatever they were doing to help the family economically, they pay nothing,” he said. “I work for it and I have friends that help. We provide basic education for three years and then sponsor them for higher education. Once they go on to higher levels they will still come here in the morning for breakfast and after school to do their homework. The idea is that whichever child excels at a certain thing, say, math or playing a certain instrument, that child will come back once they graduate and teach the next generation of children for a while as a way to give back. That way, we’ll be able to expand to far more than 10 children.”
Thoroughly impressed and my curiosity growing, I continued the conversation. I told him about my beliefs on educating girls and my premature aspirations to contribute to the cause some day. He agreed on the importance of educating female children particularly, and helped me understand some of the steps he took to accomplish what he’d done. “I actually started planning for this four years ago,” he said. “First, I had to create an association (NGO), and then I had to do the more difficult task of finding a location.” I asked if finding the poorest area was an aspect of his decision, and he said that while it was a consideration, it shouldn’t be the biggest factor. “If you go deep into any place in India or a developing country, you’ll find destitution,” he said. “The political climate and parental support are, in my opinion, more important than just finding the place with the most poor kids. When I chose the village outside Varanasi, for example, I went door to door talking to parents. I knew I could only afford ten children, so I interviewed parents everywhere to learn of their educational backgrounds, income levels, and assess the support that they would give to switching their children from working to putting them in a classroom. Once that was in place, I found an unused building that we could renovate cheaply and would fit our needs. Then it was just a matter of time and preparation.” He shuffled through a shelf and pulled out a huge stack of pictures that he’d taken of his school and students. They appeared to range greatly in age and were a mix of boys and girls, and all of them were completely adorable. “If you don’t mind me asking, how much does this cost you every month?” I said. “Well, this is a first class education and could be done more cheaply. But with everything, the building, food, clothes, materials, a six person staff including someone to keep up with all the paperwork, and the doctor, I spend an average of 25,000 rupees a month.”
These kids have all likely come from countless generations of illiterate ancestors and, without the gift Ravi is giving them, would almost certainly have continued the trend for generations to come. Instead, they will all likely produce educated families, who in turn will produce generations of educated families. This man - who looks barely older than me - has managed to begin positively changing the lives of many, many people for $543.00 per month. Amazing.
When my hour was up I paid the instructor that had sat idly by while I spoke to his boss. “But you didn’t practice!” he said, confused as to why I was paying him. “Trust me,” I replied, “The hour I just spent here was well worth four dollars.” I got up to depart and the owner and I grasped both of each others hands in a thorough goodbye shake. “You are always welcome in Varanasi,” he said. “Next time, I’ll take you to the school.” I departed with my mind reeling, and spent much of the day sifting through the endless possibilities that danced through my head.


I decided to spend my last morning in Varanasi taking a solo boat ride along the Ganges during sunrise. Many personal rituals as well as daily bathing take place along the colorful ghats every morning, and checking it out is, I’ve heard, a must. It turned out to be absolutely beautiful. My fourteen year old boat captain rowed me up and down the river as I watched the sun slowly peek out from the horizon. Families bathed together and did laundry in the terribly polluted water. Personal rituals took place everywhere without regard to the hoards of crowds and boats that surrounded the people performing them. Kids played cricket on the steps as touts roamed by them looking for tourists that hadn’t found a boat yet, and bowls made of dried leaves containing fresh flowers and candles floated by everywhere, offering good karma to those who'd sent them.
At one point we passed the burning ghats, where Hindus are cremated in public. I did see a small plume of smoke but no fire, so since I presumed that there were no bodies currently burning and we were fairly far away, I was allowed to take a picture. The ghat was surrounded by charred earth and massive piles of wood, and there was also a large refuse area where discarded golden saris used to wrap the bodies shimmered brightly in the morning sun. I wasn’t sure that I was ready for the early morning tour of death, and fortunately my guide wasn’t interested in rowing closer.
After my morning boat tour ended I headed up to my hotel to check out. Having a few more hours to kill before catching my train, I decided I wanted to hire another boat for a relaxing afternoon of lounging on the hull and basking in the warm sunlight. Some time later I’d been nearly rocked to sleep when my new, exceptionally friendly guide roused me to point out that we were nearing the burning ghats. “Do you want to go closer?” he said. I’d now been awake for a few hours and felt more ready for the experience. I confirmed, and as we neared the banks I could make out that we were approaching four burning fires. “The cremations happen 24 hours a day,“ he said. “Between two hundred and two hundred and fifty cremations here every day, and each one takes about three hours.” We continued to row closer, and soon we were about fifteen feet away from the closest fire and I could feel the heat of the flames. There was a massive pile of ash about fifteen feet feet in diameter and ten feet high that was slowly spilling into the river directly in front of me. The water was almost black here, as the constant stream of ash and soot from the pile seeped into it continuously.
Next to our boat five men wearing nothing but black undergarments swam in the black water with large silver bowls. I noticed that each time they disappeared under water they resurfaced with their bowls filled with fresh sediment, and it became apparent that they weren’t, as I'd originally thought, performing some type of ceremonious dip. “What are these men doing?” I whispered to the guide in a tone hopefully quiet enough for them not to hear us. “When bodies are cremated,” he explained, “they are often burned with expensive jewelry. These people are sifting through the ashes and sediment of the river trying to find metals and diamonds they can sell.” A little disgusted, I wondered if these were the people of the lowest caste. “Are these men Dalits (literally meaning ‘oppressed’)?” I asked. “Yes, exactly,” he replied. “So why is it,” I enquired further, “that Hindus believe Dalits deserve to be Dalits? Who could deserve a life like this?” and I nodded toward them. “These men are Dalits because of karma,” he replied. “They have bad karma based on actions in previous lives.” Deciding not to delve into a philosophical conversation, I sat motionless for a while a watched the men at work. It was the worst way I’d ever seen a person earn a living.
“Notice that there is no smell,” he stated after a couple more minutes. “When Hindus die there is a 12 day waiting period that should be observed before cremation. Sometimes this doesn’t happen, and when that is the case there is a dreadful smell.” “Uhhh, yeah…” I said, while trying to find a way to change the gross subject. “So how much does it cost to cremate a loved one here?” “It costs between five thousand and ten thousand rupees, depending on the wood used,” he responded. “Geez, that’s really expensive,” I noted. “Does that mean that in addition to having rough lives Dalits also don’t get to find peace in death?” “Well,” he said, “there is a place above the ghat that tourists usually watch the cremations. They are asked to make a donation, and some of this goes to people of the lowest castes so they can be burned here. But for the most part, you are correct. They are often burned at the ghat just over there where it costs two hundred rupees,” he said, pointing to a location about six blocks away. “Brutal,” I thought. I, like many foreigners traveling here, have a difficult time with the karmic justification of the treatment that this huge portion of the population endures.
More time passed and the guide continued to teach me about the ceremonies taking place in front of us. At one point a family walked down carrying the body of a loved one on a hand-held stretcher. Like all of them, the deceased was wrapped in what looked like gold tinsel paper. They all walked down to the river and, wading in, dunked the body underwater. “This is symbolic of the last bath in the Mother Ganga,” he said. Then they took the body ashore and unwrapped the head. Fortunately, the details of the face were hidden from view. “Now each member of the family will walk to the water, scoop some into their hands, and pour it over the mouth of the body,” he said. “This is done five times by each person and symbolizes the last drink.” Sure enough, this played out precisely as he’d explained. Once completed they took the body ashore and laid it next to another that was waiting for its turn. A few minutes later I saw a fire about to be lit and the family of the deceased surround the wood pile to do a traditional ceremonious dance of some kind. It just looked like a large pile of logs to me; I didn’t see a body. I watched for a while, however, and about ten minutes after the fire was lit, I saw them: human feet stuck out of the end, already charred black and turning to ash around the toes. I then looked at the other fires and realized the same thing. Before it had just been a matrix of sticks, but now that I knew what I was looking at it was completely apparent. My stomach dropped a little; seeing a human body burning 20 feet away is as surreal an experience as one might imagine.
“This would never happen in America,” I said after a while. “Americans shy away from death.” He looked confused. “If someone has died on the roadside, for example, everything is done to shield the scene from other people. Everyone knows they’re going to die someday, but it just isn’t as embraced as it is here,” I explained. “Well death is not a bad thing because we know there is reincarnation,” he said in an almost comforting manner. “And if a person dies here, it is especially good because they will be liberated from the cycle of reincarnation altogether.” He told me that he burned both of his parents here and expects to have the same fortunate treatment upon his departure. “Is that why no one is crying?” I asked after noting this. “Yes,” he said, “but still, some of them are crying on the inside.”

A few hours later I nestled into my seat on the train and looked out the dirty window. As it picked up speed and the scenes of the city blurred into a single stream of color I fell into a state of quiet reflection. Despite not being able to note all of it here, I’d experienced a lot in the three days I’d been Varanasi. The city, as promised, had displayed the most intimate rituals of life and death and the the daily celebrations that both entail. I sat back and determined that the guide book had been correct: I was ready for it, and as a result the mad circus that is Varanasi had indeed become my favorite major city of all.

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Photos

Swaying temple
This was seperated from its base in the great flood of 1978

Comments

[nicole]

love love love
reading these blog entries. i seriously look forward to them!

[Tali]

Henry
Oh Kaci....how I loved that you named that scary lizard, Henry. And now you know the experience of 'knowing that something scary lurks in the dark'...hahaha. I am glad that you decided to live with him. I am not sure that I could have done it...