The first day we arrived in the afternoon following a morning of traveling. We set off right from the airport on a bus tour through the city. There was much history present, as it was significant to both the Buddhist as well as Hindu faiths. There was a museum full of old stone artifacts mainly centered around Buddhism, including an iconic statue of Buddha meditating that was in surprisingly great condition. We also saw the site where Buddha first preached, and there was a huge stupa built over it. Over the years it had been defaced and the statues removed, but it was still rather magnificent in its size and age.
When the sun began to set we made our way to the River Ganges. There was a nightly ceremony being performed by some of the young Hindu priests called Aarti, which means fire in Hindi. It was a very strenuous looking exercise, as it involved holding up heavy candelabras (for lack of a better word) that had fires lit on the ends. I’m not Hindu, but the ceremony was still beautiful to watch.
Perhaps even more interesting than the ceremony itself, however, was getting there. The streets were too small for our bus, so we needed to take rickshaws and even walk for part of the distance. It was a significant change from when we observed the city from the safety of our bus, because now we were inside the city, surrounded by its sights and sounds and people, a part of it. It was rather terrifying. I had only ever been to Lucknow before this, and the population of Varanasi was significantly larger. People would stare at us, and there were crippled beggars and hungry children asking for money and there was nothing that could be done about it because in the long run it would have been worse to give them anything. There was a constant fear of pickpockets, and peddlers would walk right up to you and get in your face and relentlessly try to sell you their wares and you had to keep your head down and ignore them or else they would never leave you alone even when you said no. I’m not the most personable of people, but it was difficult to ignore them without feeling bad.
The worst of these was a pair of boys who at first just made conversation with us just for the heck of it; one of them told me that he thought I had nice eyes. After a bit, however, they started trying to sell us things. There was a much increased difficulty level to saying no once you’ve made a personal connection to the person trying to sell you something. They told us that maybe we could buy something when we got back tomorrow, and we said sure, maybe, we’ll see, and hoped that we wouldn’t see them again.
The following morning we woke up at five am in order to go on a boat ride on the River Ganges. I did NOT want to go—I can’t very well describe the adverse effect that Varanasi had had on me, and it got even worse compounded with the exhaustion that I was feeling. My mother made me go, however, and so reluctantly I did. Frankly, it wasn’t the boat ride that I didn’t like the idea of; it was walking through the city again that made me upset. I dressed as differently as I could from the night before, hoping that the boys wouldn’t recognize me, but they did. Mom understood how upset I was, so she deflected them without any interaction from me, which was good except that it made me feel terrible. The one who liked my eyes tried to make conversation with me, but I was so exhausted and upset that I just looked at my feet and wouldn’t talk. After a minute he said he understood that I was tired and excused himself, which only made me feel worse that I had been that obvious in my unhappiness.
I don’t remember too much about the boat ride. We passed some cool looking old buildings and at the end there was a crematorium. Ironic, right? As we got off the boat, there was a little old man, a Hindu priest, that was giving out blessings. He singled me out and put a little red dot on my forehead, saying “be happy today.” I nearly started crying then and there.
All in all, I wouldn’t say I’m the biggest fan of Varanasi.
No comments:
Post a Comment