The River Below

BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

The train pulled into the piss-stenched station and immediately, the beggars and vendors swarmed on board. I woke up from my sticky vinyl panel and tried to sit up in my cramped seat. In the first half hour of being awake, we counted no less than ten beggars approaching us. That's one every three minutes.

Some tried the in your face tactic and thrust greedy hands in your face, shouting, "Excuse me madame. Yes, madame. Madame. Madame. Excuse me."

Another old man with haggard beard and hair crawled in on hands and knees and swept the floor with a brush, always looking down and touching your feet with his hands then taking the dust of your feet to his brow to stir pity in you.

Then came the transvestites, offering false blessings and charms and demanding money of everyone on the train. they were probably most successful as they have a reputation of being unpredictable to the point of violence. I shook my head mutely at the one nearest me, she/he turned around to leave, looked back, swore at me and uttered a curse at my head.

Still, the worse are the women and children. "Chocolate madame. Hungry. Hey! MADAME!" the children would yell and tug at your sleeve until you looked, then they'd rub their bellies and stare at you with pitiful eyes. "Chocolate. PLease madame."

Meanwhile, the lady holding the half-dead bay grabs at your arms from the platform through the train windows and shakes her dead bay pitifully at you shouting something that sounds eerily like, "Vivian. Please. Ma baba! VIVIAN! Ma baba!"

She kept it up for nearly ten minutes until the train finally pulled away.

ANd thus I awoke and welcomed a new day in India.

Eventually, our sleeper train pulled into Varanasi station. It stank of piss, mangoes, sweat and feces.

Varanasi. City of the famous burning ghats of the Ganges.

I was apprehensive having heard that this city was famous for its scams, touts and thieves. I guarded my bag with my life and strapped my money belt a little closer to my sweaty belly. We eventually found some rickshaws from our hotel and entered them with trepidation. As soon as I had pulled my last bag in, the autorickshaw sped away at breakneck speed into the crazy city traffic. We drove on into oncoming traffic, nearly hit a cow, narrowly missed a goat and honked like mad at every vehicle we passed along the way.

Eventually, we got off in front of the old city and enterd into the narrow stone streets. It was still early morning and it was misty as the sun shone through ragged canvases on the sandstone buildings surrounding us. It was like something from a movie as the walls rose three stories above us and our driver led us on foot this way and that, turning corners and getting us more and more lost. CHildren with black beady eyes stared out from behind cut-out stone windows and men with cloths around their heads shouted after us "Madame! Madame! Where you are from?"

Suddenly, our driver stopped in his tracks and motioned us all to press up agaist the wall. My first thought was that another cow was trying to get by (they rule the roads here). Then i heard the shouting. THe shouting grew louder and before i knew it a procession of twelve men all dressed in white, garlands of jasmine and chrysanthemum aorund their necks came marching down the narrow street . . . carrying a dead body on their shoulders.

None of the locals blinked an eye at it. Not even the children. I for my part, tried not to gape at the shrouded shrivelled figure.

ANother body, another dead soul off to burn on the Ganges.

AFter another few treks and one more funeral procession, we reached our hostel. It was situated exactly one ghat (a ghat is sort of like a river dock where the people of different castes come to wash or burn in the Ganges) down from the famous burning ghat. I could see smoke in the distance and as I climbed the stairs to our room, I got a better view of the river.

It was breathtaking. Men wrapped in nothing but a loin cloth washed themselves in the river while not 10 metres away, one of the shrouded bodies was dipped into the water for a pre-cremation washing. Children splashed around beside it and elsewhere, women were washing their colorful saris.

"BEWARE THE MONKEYS. LOCK YOUR BALCONY BEFORE YOU GO OUT." warned our hostel owner and let us be.

WE hired a river boat for the night and the four of us and our boat-driver paddled down the river down all the ghats to watch the sun set. At the exact moment the sun set, hoards of people crowded the shores at one ghat and a giant nighttime ceremony involving chanting, fires, way too much [cow]bell and candles was performed. Later, hundreds of people on the shore and on the river set off little lotus floating candles onto the river.

I bought one from the littleboy who had somehow managed to jump up onto our boat with his basket of wares and watched it float slowly downstream to join the others. THe moon shone eerily overhead, and downstream, the burning pyres lit up the night with their embers and morbid flames.

I glanced up at our hotel. The monkeys had made their way up to our balcony and were trying in vain to get into our room. I was glad about the warning.

The next morning, we woke up before dawn and blurry eyed, wandered down to the river yet again. The sun was just rising as we paddled out to the middle of the river and i marvelled again at how it looks like a giant, perfect yellow disc in the sky here. almost like a second moon.

The pyres were still burning. twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. A skull and some remnants of a red sari could be seen on one of the piles of burning sandalwood and i looked away at the water. It was grey and thick with ashes.

Above the ghat's towers, some one was flying a black kite and it floated in and out of the columns of smoke like a silent, grim spectre.

We ended our boat ride and wandered the narrow streets yet again. We shopped at the random little side streets and bought silk sarees from this hidden away hole in the wall where this old guy treated us like his own flesh and blood. He even made his son walk us back to our hostel as the streets were apprently not safe now that the sun was setting. We brushed him off and as soon as we wer back in our hostel, went out again tolook for a late night beer.

But the old man had been right. The streets were sudenly even more narrow and darker than I had rememebered and everywhere, dhildren and men clawed at us begging to lead us into a side street where they promised us a safe restaurant or hotel. "Madame! Come here madame! I am not trick you madame! MADAME!"

we dodged left and right and were soon lost in the black, damp streets. "We've got to get down to the ghats!" I shouted. Sarah agreed. Judy and Ronalee didn't and we all began to squabble and snarl at each other. Meanwhile, around us, men and boys kept shouting and leering. "You from Canada? You from Japan? Japani? Korea?"

We bolted down one street and turned the corner right into the burning ghats. I stared blindly ahead at all the mourning families while Ronalee just behind me stared at the shoulder and burning head of a corpse. "We can't go this way" she whispered and again, we ran into the narrow dark streets.

Eventually, we made it out to the river of another ghat, downstream from the fires and we followed the darkened river all the way to the main road. Occasionally, the wild haired, white loin-cloth-wrapped men would stare at us, and monkeys and giant ill-tempered bulls were prowling the stone steps, but for the most part, we were safe.

Well, suffice to say we made it back to our hotel in one piece, if a little ruffled. We hopped on another train and spent a slepless night heading to Agra where I am now . . . not two blocks from the Taj Mahal.

We are off to se the dancing bears now so I must go. Tomorrow, we acually go to the Taj Mahal and se the other forts nearby.

Take care all. More to be heard later. . .