-As difficult as it is to believe, it's still Sunday.
Panday comes for me at 4:00 and we go back to the Ganges because today is a big holy day to Hindus and he wants me to see the celebration.


Panday and I walk through the
"old city", though as Mark Twain said, this city is "twice as old as time", and after many turns and even more temples, we emerge above the river Ganges, in a soft March evening light.
It really is beautiful, and peaceful.
We are at the top of the stairs of the ghat, and we descend to a beach with piles of flaming branches, the crematorium. He and I take a seat, on the bench provided for the spectators.
I watch people being burned up and it's not as weird and existential as I thought it might be. As I consider what's in front if me, I realize that both my parents were cremated, only just not so unabashedly out in the open.
Life goes on, and so does death.
I actually feel that I’m not overwhelmed by something so out of the ordinary for someone from 21st century Oregon..

A man, from Calcutta, sits down next to me, and takes it upon himself to explain the entire cremation process, who does it (low caste), how much it costs (2000 rupees), and who doesn't get cremated (pregnant women, children under 10, wise men, lepers, and those with chicken pox).
It would be macabre if it weren't riveting.
We decide to continue along the riverfront.
Kids play cricket in the unlikeliest places, somehow hitting balls in spaces the size of basketball courts for a sport ordinarily played on a soccer-sized pitch.
We come upon some guys building a boat.
I mean, building a boat from scratch: cutting the boards, hand-planing the edges, chiseling the lap joints, caulking the seams, hammering it all together with homemade nails.







It actually makes me sorry that I sold all my woodworking tools- because I had always thought that boat-building had to be complicated.


-Seeing them building something from next to nothing invigorates a sense of the elemental that infuses every aspect of Indian society.
A thirsty pumpkin is not that much different from a thirsty mosquito, not that different from a thirsty chicken dipping into a dirty puddle, nor even very different from a near-comatose beggar lying next to a battered cup of water.
Not very different,
But different enough.
All existence lies on a continuum
and creation progresses in very small steps
from the infinitesimal to the cosmological.
Indian awareness, at its best,
respects every single step.



-We are still walking along the ghats and come to a series of stages/altars decked put in flowers and so, so many colored lights.
Everybody is getting ready for something big.
Panday and I take a seat next to what looks like the main act. Unfortunately, I have to sit in something that makes me cringe.
Deep breath.
Dusk is coming on and people arrive in droves, outnumbered only by the dark clouds of mosquitoes. I tell Panday that I am not as comfortable with the jostling crowd of people that he is. I hope it doesn't sound insulting.
We sit for a few moments, and he then says that he has to go to the toilette.
He doesn't return for a long time and the mosquitoes become vicious. I had not expected to be out after dark so I had not applied any insect repellent, and, as the woman behind me sprayed herself vigorously, I think, "this is crazy". I imagine every one of the millions of mosquitoes as huge and laden with malarial death.
Okay, yes an overreaction, but I had warned Panday that the crowds might be too much for me.
He indicated that that would not be a problem, and then promptly said that he needed to find a toilette.
I sit there,
and sit there,
and sit there,
watching the gathering clouds of mosquitoes.
I decide that I can’t do this.
I know that Panday would wonder what the hell had happened to me, but he lives here, after all, and can take care of himself.
A certain impishness prompted me to start walking back to the hotel, not having the slightest idea which way to go, except against the river of pilgrims.
It was another one of those moments, like I had in Fez, Morocco so many years ago, when I found myself deep in the Medina, surrounded by hash pipe makers, boiling vats of the most intense colors, clotheslines swinging with brilliantly dyed silks, crowds of people blithely ignoring me.
I felt liberated.

It was only later that I encountered the Arab proverb
that to be lost in one’s own city is to be closer to God



I just keep walking.
The lights of the oncoming cars and motorcycles, the cacophony of horns, whistles, singing voices only contributes to the oceanic feeling of being swept along on a tide,
first ebbing, then flowing.
I can't stop shaking my head and smiling at the incongruity of it all.
Seriously, I have no idea where I am going and I can’t take it at all seriously.
Except that i really don't want to contract malaria.
India puts a lot of faith in guides. That’s what yogis are, after all
But it does feel really liberating to be away from Panday and on my own again. I do like him, but there is something inexplicable to wandering freely.


A rickshaw driver came up beside me and I decided to get in, telling him to take me to the hotel clark. He jumped at the chance and off we went.
He said that he knew where he was going, but they always say that in Varanasi.
Trucks, horns, and lights to the left of us, trucks, horns, and lights to the right of us, sallying forth into the night rode the two of us.
All this, he said, for 70 rupees!
Well, let me tell you, after an hour of pedaling, I emptied my pockets to him.

Before anything else, let me say that it feels really crippling not to be able to eat any of the street food. It's not so much that it looks good, but that it is so much a part of the life of the country. Everybody eats in the kiosks along the side of the road, and socializes. More than almost any other country I've been in, I wish I spoke the language. I would love to be able to hang out and chat under a propane lamp, popping pappadoms.

At the moment, I am ensconced in the hotel bar with a gin and tonic, watching Australia play Kenya in cricket, with not a mosquito in sight, no chance of dying miserably beneath the wheels of a massive dump truck, and feeling rather proud of myself that I am here at all.