Varanasi - Assi Ghat

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Sunrise over the Holy Ganga....Riples spread across the glassy surface from bathers cleansing their spirits in the waters, a gaggle of colour, candles and motion.
A lone priest performs Puja to the rising sun, a burnt orange ball slowly emerging from the haze of mist, cow dung fires and funeral pyres clinging to the city. Like an ochre bindi, the sun blesses the Ganga with a streak of ochre light rippling slowly on the surface.
Flags hang limp int eh still morning from bamboo poles stuck in the silt from the monsoon season, the shore is scattered with boats, still, silent, bearing witness as humanity awakes to the city on the edge of the world.
A boat glides gently along the river.
The sun is nearly too bright to look at now, as it emerges from the dawn blessing. The remnants of last nights Dev Dipawali celebration still grace the Assi Ghat: fences of wooden ploes bound together with rough rope; packets, matches, cigarette butts and innumerable fragments of human consumption that packed the Ghat to overflowing.
A goat eats rubbish off a table, the sweepers perform their daily ritual, soon to consecrate the rubbish through fire to join the bodies drifting heavenward from the fires.
God i love this city.

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