Varanasi - the Gritty Stuff

JUNE 23, 2017 - VARANASI

Varanasi, India’s oldest continuously inhabited city, is what I imagined when I pictured India. An old city with imposing architecture along the Ganges River, spiritual music playing in the background, traffic that’s a madhouse and full of hornblowing, and filled with people and yogis and beggars and cows. Lots of cows. 

The cows are easily the most amusing part. They just hang out in the roads. Usually they’re off to the side with their buds, sometimes they go for a stroll down the streets, and sometimes, when they’re tired, they have a lie down…..sometimes in the middle of the road with zero fucks given. And people just move around them.

Less amusing is the the way in which poverty manifests itself here. Two things in paticular struck me. One: despite being a place of great spiritual importance, the Ganges is one of the most polluted rivers in the world, filled with human sewage, industrial waste, and trash. But along the river’s edge people are bathing, doing their laundry, going for a swim, and drinking the river water.

Two: I remember an online trivia game I used to play back in high school. For every question you answered correctly, the website would donate grains of rice to people in need. The first question earned you one piece of rice and your “winnings” would double with every subsequent question you got correct. I was always intrigued by the way they chose to award winnings, in countable grains of rice, rather than by price. I was reminded of this game as we walked along the riverbank yesterday afternoon and saw women lining the steps, each holding a shallow metal bowl, begging and counting individual grains of rice.

This morning we took a sunrise boat ride on the Ganges, which gave us a great view of the waterfront. From the water, we could see people spread their laundry out on the public walkways to dry, watch the cremation sites pile sandalwood for funeral pyres, see some symbols drawn on the steps (including a giant swastika - a Hindu symbol denoting auspiciousness), and better appreciate the city’s architecture.

As you might expect of a city with architecture hundreds of years old, there are parts that are crumbling or that have been damaged by monsoon flooding. Apparently, the Indian government has spent huge amounts of money repairing this old city. Generally I am in favor of historic preservation and restoration. And in one of the world’s oldest cities, it most certainly makes sense. It is nonetheless difficult to reconcile this spending when women are counting their food by the grain.