Ghats are steps that lead to holy waters. On the ghats of Varanasi pilgrims welcome the sun in the morning. Then come the locals to bathe and the animals to drink. The dhobis wash and lay hundreds of colored saris to dry in the sun. At sunset, boys play cricket, families buy snacks and stroll as if it were a promenade. I took a morning boat ride and cast a lock of my niece’s first-cut hair into the Ganges.
It was low season so he shut down his shop early and invited me to his evening round of prayers. There was durga mandir, hanuman mandir, ashrams, holy kunds…. After the first hour I lost count. I could only mimic his gestures uneasily. “You are Hindu, yes?” he asks me.
It took only a day of walking in the sun to quell my uneasiness at being pulled by half-starved 60-year-old rickshaw drivers.
They weren’t having much luck begging outside a temple just outside of Varanasi. The youngest two gave up and sat in the shade where I was reading the paper. We peeled oranges and they told me outrageous stories that made me laugh but didn‘t move me to part with my cash. It was lunchtime and I relented. I asked them what they wanted to eat, money no problem. “Chow Mein and Coca-Cola,” they screamed. Their day wasn’t such a loss after all.
I never imagined of luxuries such as a car as a teenager. I wished instead that I was a boy so my parents would let me drive a scooter and I could explore the city at will. But it just wasn’t done - not by the good daughters of the middle class. Now, nearly 20 years later, you still don’t see very many Indian women on two-wheelers in New Delhi. Thanks to the economic boom they’re in cars. But in small towns such as Varanasi I saw dozens, zipping along as heedless as any male driver.
The street food of Varanasi is famous. I tried a dozen "chats" - don’t even ask me the ingredients and the numerous variations. And I would top it with fresh sugarcane juice. I guess that would be my greatest vanity, my stomach hasn’t rebelled once in India.
There are aspects of Buddhism that mystified me in Bodh Gaya and Sarnath - the prostrations to the 35 imaginary Buddhas, the cheap labor of the conscripted child monks, the monastery construction boom amid the squalor of the poorest people of India - but nowhere else in this crowded country did I find the serenity that existed at the Buddhist sites.
Buddhism was lost to India for nearly a millennia when a Dalit (‘untouchable’) leader led a mass conversion to escape the caste system. But Indian Buddhists are still rare. I saw only foreigners at the pilgrimage sites even though all English programs stopped in the off-season.
I don’t defend child labor, but I always ask those who object to it what the alternatives are for the illiterate, landless family of eight, of ten, of a dozen. Still, after Pappu who manages a store daily from sunrise to past sunset, after Khusboo and her baby sister who cook chapattis for the dhabba customers, after Rekha who collects garbage instead of going to school, the retorts don’t come as easily.
My friend told the railway attendant to take good care of me, an Indian woman traveling alone - overnight! The attendant took me out of the crowded carriage to a spacious, higher class one, made my bed and served dinner well past service time.
