the kingdom of kali
This morning I watched a dog eat a human foot. It looked like a rather stringy meal, but the dog was emaiciated and diseased, so any feed’s a good feed. Varanasi is the most INDIAN of places- the holy of holies, the city of light, extant in the same form since the sixth century b.c, a place where pilgrims can be completely purified of all sins in the mother Ganga, and just by dying here can attain INSTANT NIRVANA!!! It’s a confluence of untroubling contradictions, where enlightenment and squalor, disease and purity coexist like two sides of the same coin. It’s one of the most fundamental things about this insanely religious country of hindus, moslems, sikhs, buddhists and christians, that contradictory ideas can occupy the same space and time. It seems absurd to watch hindi children seeking ritual purification by diving into the torrent gushing from a large-bore sewage outflow pipe issuing into the ganges, where charred body parts bob in the shallows, where factories disgorge constant streams of mercury and other toxic shit, where men pick through the mud for jewellery left behind by the funeral pyres of the burning ghats, but it is all kind of beautiful, and understandable on the fundamentally human levels that politeness, “standards” and political correctness do not equip us westerners to describe.
Destroyed several times in it’s long history, Varanasi, constantly regenerative, has grown itself into a tangled, maze of unmappable alleyways. Lined by crumbling buildings and temples built atop the ruins of older structures, these streets will not admit cars, and even rickshaws have trouble, so the old city is explored on foot (pressing past cows and water buffalo where necessary), leaving one open to the unwelcome attentions of the touts, souvenir sellers and conmen who have been preying on the healthy tourist industry since the middle ages. We westerners stand out like a sore thumb, and the exchange rate, and general attitude of guileless loved-up credulity that this country seems to inculcate in even the most hardened german backpacker means that we may as well have giant dollar-signs painted on our foreheads when the priests administer the smeared saffron and ganges mud of puja. I have fifteen thousand rupees cash in my wallet for fuck’s sake, and moving amongst people who don’t earn that much in five years means you get to see some pretty elaborate and cynical scams.
Despite the fact that everyone you meet is trying to take your money, the people of varanasi seem able to combine a rapacious business sense with a weird hospitality and friendliness that seems to well from their gentle pace of life and religious security. ALL of the locals will try it on with you, though, and the best response is just to laugh at their outrageous demands and inflated prices, because generally they’ll laugh along with you at the whole fucked-ness of it all.
Although the monsoon has arrived here, and the river is very high, It’s unbelivably stinking hot here, and I pour sweat even lying under the ubiquitous indian ceiling fan (manufactured by bajaj!) in the stained-glass lit haven of our beautiful hotel room, except for two hours every afternoon, when it buckets with incredibly torrential rain. I love this place, and it feels possible to learn stuff about life here, surrounded by all this death. Around the burning ghats, pieces of human bone litter the cobbles underfoot, but it is forbidden, and considered inappropriate for anyone to cry.
casio :: Jun.30.2008 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »
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