Update update, slow boat pictures

Our boat arrives

Repairing the boat. Notice how the boards are sewn together and the seams are packed with fiber caulking that expands when wet. The whole thing is then sealed with fish oil, which darkens the wood in time.


At the entrance to the hospital



Men paddle by

Our chef proudly puts out the first lunch

Various pickles with the meat of water buffalo, served with papadams

A light snack of tapioca root and spiced beef

The toddy collector

His tools. The handle (barely visible) used for cutting the palm to release the sap. The bone is to beat the stalk to encourage the flow (I think) . The vessel is for collecting the liquid that has collected overnight in another container

At the river's edge de-licing

Making twine from coir (coconut fiber)

Sails made from feed sacks

Sunrise from the boat

A late afternoon paddle

The slow boat was splendid. It moved through the canals, lakes and rivers at about the same speed as this Internet connection. We're at a cardomom plantation, 4,500 feet up in the Western Ghats straddling Kerala and Tamil Nadu. We look out on tea plantations and flowering trees lusher than all the flowering vegetation in the entire history of time. We'll get a report onto the blog when the Internet situation improves, in a few days maybe. We're learning Malayalam at the same rate we learned Hindi, but otherwise we're lapping everything up.

Cochin

Small catches are auctioned as they are caught

Chinese fishing nets tip in and out of the water,

operated by four people

Kathakali

This traditional Kerala theater---literally "story play"---dramatizes the Hindu epics of good battling evil through drumming, chanting, singing and a highly stylized form of acting. Kathakali goes back at least to the 16th century.

With other tourists, we arrved an hour and a half before the performance to watch the actors sit on the stage and apply their fantastical make-up, created out of coconut oil and local minerals. Then the emcee/singer explained the hand and eye movements as one actor demonstrated them. The one-hour play we saw was about an arrogant archer whose ego makes him treat others badly. The god Krishna disguises himself as a demon---the one with the black face and sprouting nose in Joe's pictures---and defeats the egotist in battle. Then he reveals his true identity, and the impudent archer is chastened.

With the drums, the chanting, the make-up and costumes, the incense, the oil lamps, and the subtlety and grace of the acting, it's yet another example of Indian sensory overload. In this case, it is enchanting.

Update

New photos are up of Rajasthan and Agra and Getting Around.
Today we head for the backwaters and then the hills of Kerala. So we may be out of touch for several days.

Pictures from Rajasthan

In their own worlds

Following a wedding procession in Jaipur.

The groom is on the horse with the generator in tow.

Porters resting at the train station in Jaipur

The layers


Our reflection in a large silver urn at the Pallace in Jaipur.



Bamboo scaffolding on the 6th floor.

Street life.




Go Nike


At the amber fort this 17c mosque was on four sides this
beautiful carved marble screen.

Tropical

Tuesday we flew IndiGo Airlines---cramped, fast, cheap---down to Kochi (Cochin) on the Malabar coast and will have a report soon on this delectable spot near the southern tip of India. Saturday we leave Fort Cochin for two days on a slow boat through the Kerala "backwaters." Joe is trying to get more pix up before we leave Cochin. He's got some beauties.

Delhi

Delhi is where we got our best look at modern India. That's the India of about 200 million people whose incomes and educational levels place them in the middle class or above. India's other billion or so people still live in poverty, many in isolated rural villages where life has not changed for 2000 years. It's the India Mahatma Gandhi believed to be pure and sacred, and where he spent his days at a spinning wheel when he wasn't busy throwing out the British.

It was unnerving to read that an emerging problem in India is obesity. A lot of the new high-tech jobs are sedantary, and the 200 million eat well. In the Connaught Circle area of central Delhi, where we stayed in another good-enough hotel, the streets are alive at night with shoppers and diners at the almost uniformly excellent restaurants. The garb is mostly Western. We witnessed a mob scene at the Benetton store, which was having a winter sale. (Delhi is chilly this time of year, 60s daytime, 40s at night.)

The best thing we did in Delhi was have lunch with Bela Singh. She's the India director of Cross Cultural Solutions. CCS is an admirable American organization that sends curious and adaptable tourists to countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to do low-level volunteer work for three weeks. These travelers enjoy a cultural immersion denied tourists who just do the Varanasi-Agra-Jaipur circuit (like us). The volunteers pay $2,800 each, plus airfare, a deal. My daughter Sydney was a CCS volunteer in India before working at the organization's headquarters for several years in New Rochelle, and later Hedy, her mom, did CCS/India, too. Both are big boosters of CCS, and when we met Bela we saw why.

An attractive 40-something psychologist, Bela is a modern Indian woman who loves traditional India. Her husband and son live in New Jersey. They visit one another, but she chooses to live in the India she finds deeply, endlessly fascinating. She likes Indians' comfort with their own karma and believes people here are essentially more contented than in many places. She has no illusions about India's harsher realities. It was Bela, in fact, who told us not to give money to beggars in Delhi---they are members of criminal gangs! She knows the ropes, and as we grilled her somewhat relentlessly she laughed and said she was giving us a lot of her standard cultural orientation pitch. Not only were we freeloaders---no $2,800 fee for us---but Bela paid for lunch. We hope to return her hospitality when Bela and her husband travel in the U.S. in August.

Talking with Bela, and by just keeping our eyes open in Delhi, we began to get a better feel for Hinduism. Its idea of many gods is strange to us. One really elusive one seems like plenty. Though as we saw people praying to different gods in a variety of settings---temples, street shrines, the stairwell in our hotel---a kind of prayer-answering division of labor began to make sense.

As we came down for breakfast one morning, the doorman in our hotel, the Jukaso Inn, was chanting and offering garlands of jasmine to a small statue of Ganesh. I don't know what the doorman was praying for, but this elephant-headed figure is the god of good fortune. He is also the patron of scribes---I had a picture of a smiling Ganesh, elephant-tusk pen in hand, over my computer last year when I wrote Death Vows (MLR Press, September 2008) in three and a half months. Go figure.

Hinduism is comfortable with ambiguity, even contradiction. Its multiplicity of deities reflects the complexity of lfe as people actually experience it. These gods make sense as connecters between the multifarious lived-in world and an equally varigated spirit world. As with Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, behaving decently is what Hindus are supposed to try to do, and for which they will be rewarded later on. Dharma is the righteous pattern of conduct that will lead a Hindu to good karma. But in Hinduism there is no single revealed truth, deviating from which might lead to some zealot shoving a stone wall over on you.

Another nice feature of Delhi was this: we insinuated our way (i.e., walked) into the Imperial Hotel, a five-star neo-Raj gem we could not afford to stay in, and used their business center to upload photos onto the blog. The staff were sweet as could be, even after they asked for our room number. Then we went downstairs and paid New York prices for a tandoori mixed grill (we'd been eating mostly veggie and liking it) that was probably one of the ten tastiest meals either of us has ever eaten. Fitting right in with the 200 million, we're not so svelte ourselves these days.

Pix

Pics are now up of Bhadohi and Varanasi in those sections of the blog. We're in Delhi and tomorrow fly south to tropical Kerala.

Getting around

Lal and Dick strategize about finding our way into the center of Delhi

My cyclo driver in Jaipur treats me to his favorite samosa

Passing the endless mustard fields

We flew to India---Boston-Newark-Delhi---on Continental Airlines, which was good preparation for getting around Jaipur by cyclo-rickshaw. There's no need to dwell on the dismal state of U.S. airline service---you know the drill. But I will say that Newark Airport's changing its name after 9/11 to Newark Liberty International Airport---a big knuckle sandwich for Osama bin Laden!---could also be interpreted to mean, "If you don't like it here, you're free to leave at any time." Unless, of course, you're already strapped into an aircraft inert on the tarmac. "Folks, we're number 20 in the queue, so I suggest you sit back, relax...."

The overnight train trip to Bhadohi was both more scenic and more comfortable than traveling on Continental, and the railway's rice biriyani far superior to the airline glop. But the Varanasi-Khajuraho-Agra-Jaipur-Delhi sojourn was too complex to do by train and too expensive to do by air. So we hired a car and driver. (It was $90 a day, breaking the bank. Though our other expenses have been a bit lower than anticipated: good-enough hotels outside Delhi for $25-$40; superb meals from $5 on down to 25 cents. We'll have a hotel and food report one of these days.)

Salil, the owner of Tiwari Tours and Travel in Varanasi, arranged for our car. This agency is up a narrow flight of stairs next to a cheap hotel above Assi Ghat. You leave your shoes in the corridor and sit cross-legged on a cream-colored mat. While we waited for Salil, we eavesdropped on a German tour-group leader explaining to Salil's brother that she needed six adjoining bulkhead seats on a Lufthansa flight.
"Six? Oh, my God!"
"Yes, yes, these people must sit together comfortably! Can you do eet?"
"But what if those seats are taken?"
"Then I weel have to speak to Lufthansa!"
"Oh, my God!"

The brother gets on the horn to Lufthansa and is promptly put on hold. We can hear the perky on-hold ditties from where we are sitting. Indians love to deal with people but not machines posing as people, and Salil's brother is being driven up the wall. "Always, always, it is like this! It hurts me in here! It hurts my mentality!"

Meanwhile, the chai wallah arrives---milky, sweet tea is always served, a lovely ritual---and then Salil himself. He is a trim, bespectacled man in crisp slacks and diamond rings on two fingers. His melancholy is evident right away; he sniffs at the six-bulkhead-seats ongoing drama. As he explains convincingly that a car and driver are best for us and then makes some calls, Salil tells us that he is from bucolic Sikkim and hates Varanasi. He works all the time because if he ever left the office his employees would screw up and they would steal from him. There's a brief moment of relief when Lufthansa comes up with the six bulkhead seats. Everyone is astonished except the German tour leader, who shouts, "I knew you could do eet!"

Salil has a driver he wants us to meet who is now on the way. We ask him how much to tip the driver at the end of the trip. "Whatever you like," he tells us, and then adds, looking glum, "And what do you have for me?"
"What would you like?" I ask.
Gazing off into the middle distance, Salil murmurs, "Do you have love?"
We are puzzled by this and let it go.

We pay by MasterCard, and two days later the driver appears at our hotel (the dump above Salil's) on schedule at 7 a.m. Salil himself is there to see us off in our little Tata sedan. The driver, Lal, is a gap-toothed, cheerfully wily little man with mustard oil in his hair. His English is serviceable, and his driving turns out to be aggressive in the Indian manner but only borderline suicidal. Over eight days, he takes us where we want to go, getting badly lost only once in turbulent Gwalior, and faltering only when we end the trip in Delhi and we learn that Lal is terrified of the corrupt local cops who extort money from commerical drivers.

Along the way, we see the aftermath of some road accidents---several trucks overturned; a Tata like ours that has rolled over so many times it has assumed roughly the size, shape and overall design of a soccer ball. India's roads are mostly dreadful. A network of expressways is being built. But the ones we saw were chockablock with bicycles, pedestrians, sacred cows, herds of goats, and bullock and camel carts. We rented cars and drove ourselves in Zimbabwe and Turkey but wouldn't dream of doing it here.

The road trip with Lal (we're back in Delhi) was the way to go. We had good food at roadside joints---the tastiest aloo chat we ever ate, for under a buck, and delectable samosas. (Bottled water is available everywhere, so safe hydration in not a problem.) The countryside was green with wheat fields under hazy blue skies, and there were miles and miles of mustard fields with their buttercup-yellow flowers. (Mustard oild here is used both for cooking and as a body and hair lotion.) The roads were lined and the fields dotted with eucalyptus, locust and mango trees. We chatted with friendly locals at tea shops. In one village, two farm kids snapped the lids off baskets they were toting and up popped two cobras. Parked by the roadside for some picture-taking, we watched as a naked sadu (holy man) strolled by with his retainer. The aide told Lal he had no cell-phone reception and asked Lal if he could use his, but the sadu sniffed at us, fittingly, and instructed his companion to get moving.

Another good form of transport we've used in towns and cities is cyclo-rickshaws. We did this a lot in Jaiur. That's the capital of Rajasthan, the rocky western state that was ruled by 22 maharajahs until Indira Gandhi shut off their power and their allowances in the 1970s. There's plenty to see in Jaipur: the "pink city" old section of town; turbaned farmers and craftspeole gotten up handsomely in more shades of orange than we could count; camels and elephants traipsing around the city; Arabesque sandstone and marble palaces and forts. Our hotel, the Madhuban, was part of an exquisitely restored princely mansion. It was only $37 a night but still qualified as "our first grown-up hotel," as Joe put it.

In Jaipur, Joe befriended a cyclo driver named Granpat. This skinny guy in a red headband had followed us up the street one day while we were exploring the city on foot. When we grew tired, he was there. He knew. Joe then hired him for some photography excursions. He sent five days in his village, he said, and five in Jaipur. We think he slept in his cyclo. At the end, as Joe tipped Granpat about 700 percent, his face was wet with tears. I photographed Joe and Granpat together, and a well-dressed Indian man walked over and berated us for being seen with a rickshaw driver. Joe explained, "He is my friend." That wasn't true---Joe is not delusional---but it put this pompous buttinsky in his place.

(The most obnoxious Indians we have observed are the very poor and the very rich. Some of the beggars and street kids are ferocious. But the rich snapping and snarling at the lower orders are the worst. During lunch in a tourist-trap restaurant at the Rajput fort at Orccha, we watched a Hogarthian Indian family make the waitstaff jump through flaming hoops. The patriarch used his tongue like a circus trainer's whip. Fittingly, this was at a place called the Hotel Sheesh.)

Near Jaipur is the 16th century Rajasthani capital of Amber, a pink marble and sandstone fort and palace atop a bare mountain. You can hike up or ride in a Jeep, but we chose to climb the half-mile steep slope on elephants. This is one of those tourist experiences often rightly described as "unforgettable," but it is also vaguely unpleasant. The elephants are dolled up in paint and bright satin. A Friend of the Elephants organization looks after their welfare, but elephants in captivity always seem listless and unfortunate.

The mahout sat on the elephant's head, and we were perched on the howdah (seat), Joe's legs dangling down one side, mine the other side, for balance. Off to the left was a stone wall high enough to keep elephants from plunging down the mountainside to the rocks below, but not high enough to contain any rider an elephant might suddenly decide to flip into oblivion. About halfway up, Joe said, unhelpfully, "Oh, look. I see a pile of broken tourists down there."

Agra

The throngs

From the Red Fort, trrough the everpresent haze

The people were equally dazzling

Agra is tout hell, which in India is saying something. But it's worth fighting your way through the competing camel-cart jockeys and braying doo-dad hucksters to lay eyes on the Taj Mahal. No photo does it justice. I saw it in 1966 and amazed myself by being moved nearly to tears. It was the same this time. You approach it through a maze of outbuildings with heavy security. Then it just floats into view. It looks small, almost like a model, until you realize those many specks at its base are people. The Taj may be the most perfectly conceived structure ever built. I was interested to read that Shah Jahan himself supervised the design and construction, as a memorial to his favorite wife.

How can mere form be so thrilling? Joe has said being an artist is futile in the end because you can't compete with nature. Shah Jahan proved otherwise, setting a wonderful example for Joe and other artists who help make the rest of us want to wake up in the morning and open our eyes.

Khajuraho

10th century temple at Khajuraho

Nobody knows why artists of the Chandela dynasty carved erotic scenes on Hindu temples. But this went on for roughly a hundred years in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Some scholars think this Kama Sutra in stone is a kind of marriage manual for Brahmin boys. Though the numbers of people involved in some scenes suggests activities beyond marriage. Others think the sculptures are Tantric---cultists who believed that physical as well as spiritual gratification led to Nirvana. The Indians we met just seem to think these lovingly wrought sensual images are kind of cool. As our guide said, people "just come and see and do like that."

At night there's a sound and light show, done in Hindi and then English, that's pretty bad. You sit on plastic chairs in an open field and freeze while trying to decipher whether the flickerings and flashes around you are planned or just another feature of northern India's erratic electrical supply. It's not so romantic.

Update

We've been to Khadjuraho and Agra, and now we're in Jaipur and head back to Delhi tomorrow. We'll update the blog and try to get some pictures up from there.
Meanwhile, I'll just quote from a note Joe sent his parents. He told them India is "like a big tassle of humanity waving out of control in a vigorous wind."
That's it.

City of Life

Dusk in Varanasi

Praying, bathing and washing

Garland vendors


The water bufalo cool off

Smoke from the funeral pyres at one of the burning ghats

a holy man

Drying a sari

Setting their candles adrift

Sweeping the steps of a ghat

Pilgrims arrive

In an alley

Varanasi, Joe said, is where you go to have your life flash before you. Other people's, too. Hindus believe that by having your remains placed in the purifying waters of the holy Ganges you might achieve moksha, breaking the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Two of the stone ghats (steps) that line the Ganges for seven kilometers are "burning ghats." Families bring shrouded corpses, which are placed by funerary workers in wood piles, doused with ghee, and the eldest son lights the pyre. Untouchables carry the ashes to the water's edge. The ashes are sifted for jewelery, which is salvaged to help pay for the cremations of the poor. Unincinerated bits of bodies are set adrift in the river, too---food for the fish that contributes to the cycle of life.

From a respectful distance, Joe and I sat on a wall and watched a funeral. The setting is like nothing you've ever seen: the crumbling 18th-century palaces that line the river; the crowds of mourners; the rising smoke and flames; the sizzle and pop. It's Dante, except fo Hindus this is heaven. It's like the City on Fire sequence in Sweeney Todd (dropped from the movie, I've read). It's like some odd end-of-days ritual being enacted around the slag heaps in Nanticoke, PA. Included in this sober, unhurried scene, too, are the thousands of pilgrims who come each day from across India---the variety of colorful costumes is dazzling---to have their souls cleansed by Mother Ganges. Tens of thousands of local people also bathe in the river, adroitly cleansing themselves while maintaining a modest covering. They also brush their teeth in the river using medicinal sticks.

Oh, did I mention that 45,000 whole human corpses are also dumped into the Ganges each year at Varanasi? Plus cows? And tons of raw sewage? The miracle is that anybody in the vicinity is still standing at the end of the month. But they are, somehow. A foundation is working on ways to improve Varanasi's public-health situation.

The best way to view Varanasi is from out on the river in a rowboat at sunrise. A quiet-spoken young boatman named Babu swindled us, we later learned, overcharging us by a factor of four. We had learned to haggle with the aggressive entrepeneurs but not the nice, polite ones.

In the darkness, the river downstream seems to be aswarm with fireflies. As you get closer, you see hundreds of lighted candles, each representing a pilgrim's prayer, afloat in tiny leaf boats. A kid in a reed boat drifted by and we bought and lit two candles and set them afloat. The first light in the sky is dim and grey in the haze but soon turns platinum and rose. Joe said, "Ingres." The sun appears suddenly out of the mist and within minutes acts like it means business. We started out in sweaters and windbreakers and were soon down to T-shirts.

Indians who go to Varanasi say it changes their lives. This reminds me of a friend, now gone, sadly, who used to say that every time he saw a Chekhov play it changed his life. Execpt, his life never changed. And that was so Chekhovian. I think Varanasi is something like that.

Rug sellers

Village elder in Modh

Patern behind actual carpet

We were a distinct curiosity

Cyclist with wool

Arriving on the train platform in Bhadohi

Indigo wool drying

School visit in Bhadohi

Silver gilt meat in storefront

Aslam and Dick enjoy some sugarcane with villagers looking on

The Ansaris have been in the rug business for 40 years, and for many generations before that they were weavers. While the family once lived on the margins in the town of Bhadohi, on the Gangetic plain of eastern Uttar Pradesh, now they are prosperous enough to be building a third gudam. That's the Hindi word for house, but it can signify much more. The current Ansari gudam is a sprawling three-story concrete structure with three generations of extended family living on the upper floors. Below is the binding and finishing operation for the rugs woven on hand looms in 20 villages spread throughout U.P. Wool is dyed out back in a cement cauldron over a wood fire. Dry petals from the dye-plant flowers flutter among the workers. There's a guest room on the first floor of the gudam next to a small garden. We slept there for two nights, cozy under wool blankets in a bed the size of Rajasthan.

The Ansaris are Muslim, as are most people in Bhadohi, and perhaps for this reason we were not introduced to any female members of the family, except for one of Aslam's daughters on the day we left. And that was just "hello." During our stay, however, we sometimes spotted both boys and girls quietly watching us from the roof garden far above.

The men of the family were open and friendly, especially Aslam. He is a good friend of Jeff Arcari, the Boston rug dealer who sponsored our visit to Bhadohi via the WBUR raffle won by Bob and Barbara Wheaton. Although busy with the everyday operations of the business, Aslam saw to it that younger family members took turns showing us around.

One of Aslam's nephew's, a well-spoken university student who told us happily that he had "no bad habits," showed us some local weaving operations, as well as the original Ansari gudam, built by Aslam's father. The building is now a primary school the family founded and funds. Another school is under construction nearby, this one sponsored by "Mr. Chris," another Boston rug dealer. A second nephew we met, a twenty-something handsome lad with an easy laugh, is getting married in late February---we were invited to the wedding but will have left India by then---and he was so excited he could barely keep his head on straight. He said his bride was a young woman he knew and liked. Several young Indian men we met spoke favorably of arranged marriages, the norm here, and disdained Western marriage customs that result in high divorce rates. Indian women may agree, although we have not met any whose opinions we might ask.

Another nephew, Shadab Ansari, met us in Delhi on our arrival and accompanied us on a day-long guided bus tour of the city---Parliament, India Gate, the Indira Gandhi Museum (with blood-spattered assassination sari), several temples and the Mahatma Gandhi tomb. The tour was conducted entirely in Hindi, but we liked being among Indian tourists in from the hinterlands as they looked over their cultural heritage with satisfaction.

The best part of our visit to Bhadohi was when Aslam drove us out one afternoon to the village of Modh. It's about 7 kilometers out of town amid healthy-looking rice and wheat fields. About 60 families live in Modh in mud houses with home-baked tile roofs. There's a village well and a common diesel pump for irrigating the surrounding rice paddies and vegetable plots. Each house in Modh contains a large hand-built hand loom, on which a gorgeous rug with a Persian design is being woven by a family member. Each family produces a rug a year, on average. The prices are negotiated by elected village leaders---democracy functions in India at all levels---and the rugs are the primary source of cash in the village. The rugs then end up in stores like Landry and Arcari in Boston, and on well-appointed floors from Beacon Hill to Concord.

Our arrival in Modh was an occasion, and the rituals of Indian hospitality were played out gracefully. Aslam was plainly not just respected but liked. He had a nice way with both the village leaders and the weavers and farmers. And because he had brought us to Modh we were treated warmly. After the tour of rugs-in-progress, we sat on charpoys and gnawed on fresh sugar cane as the villagers gathered and Joe took lots of pictures. We got a tour of the banana grove and saw bananas so new out of the flower they were the size of fingernails. Snacks appeared one by one: spicy fried potatoes, freshly fried potato chips, candied fruit, and the inevitable sweet chai.

Aslam and the village leaders talked business and some politics. The government was upbraided for providing electricity to Modh for only a few hours a day even as an enormous privately-owned cell-phone tower rose nearby. Aslam told us later that the villagers received poor educational and health services from the government. Their entire world was their village and what they made of it themselves. He said they knew nothing of the larger world and were barely aware of a place called India. It looked to us though that they valued Aslam and what he represented. And they valued their own artistry and industry, which put beautiful rugs on floors in places the people of Modh could not begin to imagine.

Errata

We'll be back in Delhi January 19, not 29.

From Khadjuraho---January 13

We’re on a narrow street in the town of Bhadohi, 350 miles east of New Delhi. We’re stuffed into the back seat of a tiny Mazda Maduri, alongside a member of the Ascari family, our hosts for the WBUR/Landry and Arcari-sponsored early days of our trip. Driving as fast as the law of physics allows is Aslam Ascari, one of three partners in the family rug-producing business. Joe, in the middle of the back seat, has a dead-on view out the windshield at the scene hurtling by: pedestrians by the dozens, rickshaws, bikes, scooters, rattletrap buses, clouds of dust, wandering cows, tractors tugging carts piled high with bundles of died wool---maroon, deep blue, blue-black, mustard-colored. As we lurch this way and that, crashing over the potholes, horn blaring, Joe says to me, “Look at that! I always knew India was for me.”
He meant in part that he is a glutton for overstimulation---nobody with ADD will ever be disappointed in India. He also meant that for anybody who gets up in the morning dying to find out what the great unfolding saga of the human race has to offer next, India is sure to provide surprises, texture, narrative tension, meaning. And it just keeps coming at you. You spend the entire day---and in your dreams on top of that---considering, puzzling, gawking, coping, ducking. I have rarely seen Joe happier.
The other day we fell into the clutches of a holy man. We were in Varanasi---formerly Banaras, originally Kashi, the Hindu “City of Life”---and as we meandered through the byways behind the decaying palaces that line the Ganges, we stuck our noses into a Hindu temple. “Come, come!” cried a small man with betal-stained teeth and a grey stubble of beard. We knew we were in for it; nearly everything that happens to tourists in Varanasi is part of a hustle. But we needed guidance---including what to do with the garland of marigolds a kid sold us on the way in---and there was always the chance that this little man in his threadbare tunic and Nehru hat was more interested in our spiritual lives than our wallets. (Today, outside a temple in Khadjuraho, a man engaged us in casual conversation, wished us happy travels, and then left us. We felt wonderful.)
The temple the small man in Varanasi led us into was a mess. It smelled and the lights didn’t work. We were led from dank stone alcove to dank stone alcove. The man discoursed in an incomprehensible mix of Hindi and English on the images of Shiva we could barely make out in the barred and padlocked recesses. Shiva, the deity with a snake around his neck, is the Hindu god of death and rebirth and is said to have resided in Varanasi. Soon we came to an altar where we were directed to place our necklace atop others and pray to Shiva. We struck meditative poses. Indian men and women, walked in, offered brief prayers and left. In another alcove we were instructed to place our open palms above the flowers on the altar and repeat after the holy man a prayer to Shiva. As we cast our eyes downward, our mentor shut his eyes and began to utter short phrases in Hindi with the rhythms of an incantation. After each phrase, he waited while we mimicked his words. This went on a good deal longer than expected. Joe did not look at me, but I glanced at him once. I saw him staring hard at the altar and sounds were coming out of his mouth. After a while, I coughed. The praying went on---Joe didn’t miss a beat, and his pronunciation seemed to me good---and I picked up where I had left off.
Joe and I are as spiritual as the average cheeseburger. (I once said this to a friend who is in frequent touch with other realms, and she replied, “But a cheeseburger can be VERY spiritual.”) A New York Times science piece last year reported that a researcher had found a “spiritual” center of the human brain---except some people don’t have one. That’s us. In Southeast Asia last year, we developed a warm and respectful feeling for Buddhism, even though we do not share its central beliefs, such as reincarnation. The same may happen with us and Hinduism, though not yet.
Jawaharlal Nehru believed most of India’s 9 million or so wandering ascetics---you see them everywhere in Varanasi, bug-eyed and bearded, in cotton outfits in many shades of orange---were crackpots and scam artists. For all we knew, the little man in the temple may have been sincere in his effort to connect Joe and me with the life-giving spirit of Shiva. Either way, when his praying wound down, he did ask for a donation. When proffered one, he requested a larger amount. On the way out, he asked for a personal donation, which we politely declined to cough up. He also asked me for my ballpoint pen---one of the Paper-Mate cheap jobs I carry everywhere---and when I handed it over, the man asked, wasn’t there a cap that went with it?
For other Westerners, the spiritual pull of India remains great. We see them, in groups or individually, gotten up in the loose cotton traditional local garb, with dabs of paint on their foreheads. It’s not for me to deny or presume to begin to fathom anybody else’s spiritual quests, but there’s something not quite convincing about all this. At least superficially, it’s as if thousands of Indians showed up in Lancaster County, PA and went around dressed up like the Amish. (Yesterday when Joe gave a coin to a beggar, someone rushed up to him and dabbed and orange slash on his forehead. He looked as if he’d just had a run-in with Jesse James.)
If we haven’t gotten with the spiritual program, our connection with secular India has been thoroughgoing. The practical difficulties are considerable---a Swedish backpacker we met on a bus tour of Delhi the day after we arrived in India told us he had given up exploring Delhi’s sights on his own; it was just too time-consuming. The whole place just barely functions. For a nuclear power, India’s infrastructure is surprisingly reminiscent of Cambodia’s. Even our “first class AC sleeper” for the 16-hour rail journey from Delhi to Bhadohi, with its three-tiered open compartments, left us feeling less like passengers and more like cartons of toilet paper racked up at Costco. (Anybody remember the 1940s novelty tune “His Feet’s Too Big for de Bed”?)
And yet…. The people, by and large, are polite and often warmly hospitable. We’ll try to get a blog posting up soon on our amazing three days with the Ascaris, a fascinating family who treated us splendidly. (For a variety of practical reasons, we are now off on our own.) Varanasi was unforgettable. It’s where Hindus wish to die, if they can, cremated on the “burning ghats” along the purifying Ganges. We witnessed this ritual. We’ll try to report on both the Ascaris and Varanasi soon. We’ll also report on the erotic temple sculptures here in Khadjuraho. As our cheerful guide put it this morning, “People see it and then they go and do like that.”
Tomorrow we head to Agra and the Taj Mahal, then to Jaipur, the “pink city.” We’ll be back in Delhi for several days January 29 and will try to get some of Joe’s amazing pictures onto the blog.
We get bits of news from the U.S. After New Hampshire, The Times of India said Hillary was “gasping for breath.” Yesterday, India TV news reported that Bush had “invaded Pakistan.” We’ll have to ask around about that.

Resurfaced

We only SEEM to have vanished. To you. Not to us.
Apparently this swaggering nuclear power has all kinds of filters on its Internet services, and we have only just now been able to access our own blog. All's well. We are ourselves. India is India.
We're in Khadjuroha and about to set off to peruse the erotic temple sculptures. Later today we'll try to post a wordy blog about our amazing trip. For now, I'll just quote Joe. When I reminded him that lots of people had said to us that traveling in India could take a lot out of you, he said, "Oh no, I disdagree with that. I could stay here forever!"
More soon.
The Poshmos

Test

This is Dick with a test posting the night before we leave for India.