Chai guru
Satish is another simple man who, over the last 13 years, I have always located in his chai shop on the way to the Manikarnika burning ghat in Varanasi. A quiet, reserved man who makes an art of tea-making (and it tastes great). Now starting to grey, his endearing smile is something to lift the spirits. As I sit and drink, corpses wrapped in ornate cloth are carried by on their way to the wooden piers for burning to the chant of "Ram nam satya hai" (the name of Ram is the truth). Satish works on in silent attention to his otherwise mundane life ... but this is his 'duty'.
The Indus Valley civilization, one of the oldest in the world, dates back at least 5,000 years. Aryan tribes from the northwest invaded about 1500 B.C.; their merger with the earlier Dravidian inhabitants created the classical Indian culture. Arab in... ... read more 
