i'm sitting in an internet cafe in varanasi. you can find me in the heart of the old city, and i mean 2000 years old, smack dab between pandhey ghat and dasaswamedh ghat on the ganges river. it's hot. smoking hot...and i'm smoking. smoking pine lights, in a white pack with a blue logo. they're shit but only 25 rupees (60 cents). someone just sneezed. a sadhu walks by outside. he's given up all his earthly possessions to pray and bathe in the ganges. his hair is long and dusty, he's wearing orange.

there's a fly in my hair. i'm coughing up polluted air.

varanasi is one of the oldest habitations on earth, second only to damascus in syria. some people think it's older. we're on the west bank of the ganges river. a holy, holy place. the locals call her mother ganga. ghats (or stepped docks) line the western bank. stairs lead up to the ancient, crumbling buildings and tiny alleys of the old city. some shops are big enough for only one person, the shop keeper, and even then, he has to sit. he retrieves whatever you'd like from the floor around him. cows walk by. dogs nap in the shady spots, wherever they may be. sometimes the middle of an alleyway, though i can barely stretch my arms across.

we're plagued with blackouts from the water treatment plant. uses too much energy. they last for hours, every day, every night. it's unexpected and we lie in the heat in our room, waiting for the fan to come back on.

the shopkeepers perform puja offerings every morning. wafting incense over their products, a little on the toilet paper, a little over the cigarettes, don't forget some on the bottles of coke and mango maaza. the corners of buildings are stained red from men spitting betel nut juice, from paan, sweet paan, paan with tobacco. i'm outside, though i feel like i'm inside, the eaves of the old buildings enclose the streets. a rat, a cat, a ferret, or was it a weasel? children are crying, some are flying kites.

we walk to the river. someone offers us a boat trip, a massage, a haircut, a shave, postcards, flowers, silks...it's too much. we dodge piles of manure. men and women bathe in the water. children run naked and splash. dunk themselves, wash away their earthly sins, reset their karma.

at manikarnika ghat, corpses burn. twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty five days a year. burning corpses. the air is sweet with the smell of sandalwood...and blistered flesh. swallows fill the skies above the smoke, darting in and out, nipping at flecks of ash and insects. the air is thick with insects, we breathe them in. we cannot take photos here, so instead we sit and watch people burn. their souls released to the sky.

Labels: india, travel, varanasi

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