A Passage Through India, part 1

15 November 2014

I recognize the complexity of referencing E.M. Forrester's A Passage to India in the title of this blog, but some of my experiences of India were seen through through a lens that I imagine many Americans (and perhaps all Westerners?) experience India, and that is through an in part idealized, exotic, awe-filled, and in part fear-filled lens. At least that's how I remember A Passage to India (though it was more than a couple of decades or so that I read it). And that is certainly how I experienced India. I have at any given moment here felt at once filled with reverence and joy, fascination and shock, fear and awe; I have felt like I was always meant to be here, and I have felt utterly alien to the landscape. To say that I have experienced India as confounding is somewhat of an understatement. I've observed myself both with amusement and with some discomfort my responses, and it is with some trepidation I share those experiences, but, you know, I wouldn't want to pretend my experience wasn't what it was, or that I am not who I am in this crazy, beautiful, complicated planet (did I also mention messy?). I can say with certainty that, as I met people in contexts that didn't center around me as a consuming tourist (not that there is any thing wrong with that), I felt connected to my experience in ways that didn't involve some of those other layers of fear, idealization, exocitism, etc.


Varanasi
My first introduction to India (outside the airport transfers in Mumbai and Calcutta) was in Varanasi. I can't remember if I read it somewhere, or if someone I interacted with on my trip reflected to me, that Varanasi as a first entry point is a bit of a "baptism by fire" experience. And that was nearly literally true for me. Varanasi teems with energy both sacred and profane. The narrow pathways in the old city along the sacred goddess Ganges river are home to touts angling to sell you goods, offer you a daybreak boat ride, smoke weed with you; they are home to cows and water buffalo (and dung and urine); they are home to those on holy pilgrimage; they are home to motorcyclists and bicycles. They are a tangle of energies that lead to a multitude of "ghats" along the Ganges, each with its own feel and distinguishing characteristics.

Cows CAN walk down steps, at least in Varanasi

I'll leave the full descriptions to the Lonely Planet India guide. For me, each foray out into the streets and pathways of Varanasi (and a day trip to Sarnath, place of the Buddha's first sermon), was an exercise in balancing trust and wariness, open heartedness and guardedness. Example: on one late afternoon I was watching the funeral rituals at the burning ghat, where bodies are brought for a washing in the sacred Ganges and then cremated on a pyre of wood. It's considered the most prodigious place in India to be cremated and it's happening 24 hours/day. As with so many things in India, I observed with a combination (and from a distance, literally and figuratively) of humility, reverence, speechlessness, and occasionally disbelief. A young man offered to explain the ritual to me so that I might understand better what it was all about. Why no women (family members) were allowed near the burnings; how the flame from which the fires were lit was sacred and had been burning for generations; how the cost of the wood needed for burning the bodies was calculated; who carried the bodies to the ghat. He led me around the ghat amongst those carrying wood and fire, amongst family members and holy men--much closer than I would have ventured on my own, or even really wanted to venture accompanied. I again found myself in a confounded state of reverence with a tinge of uneasiness and nauseousness.

The Sacred Ganges at Sunrise

That night I took the overnight train from Varanasi northwest to Haridwar. The train was scheduled to leave at 1 am but was running late, so I sat in the train station from about midnight (I didn't want to miss my train!) until 3:30 am, hoping I might figure out which train was mine, and which platform. I was the only white person at the station that night, but I think we were all experiencing the fatigue of waiting in the chill of the evening for a train to come, ousted from a seat on a bench by a limping cow eating (and flinging) trash from the nearby trashcan, and trying to find a comfortable way to be. This was definitely one of those "I'm too old for this" moments, huddled over my duffle bag in the middle of the night, trying to figure out which train, which train car, which berth, (there were two people sitting on my berth when I finally found it, but they politely moved), which train station, was mine.