Comings and Goings

In quick succession both Danielle and Melody have left for their home countries. Once more only Sohayl, Rohit and I are working in the office and I’ve moved back into Sohayl’s living room (The girls and I were living in the office). On the fifth of June another girl is coming and I’ll be moving back to the office again. Which is nice because therein lies my Internet connection.

I’m arranging a trip to Nepal for about a week or so to get my Visa renewed. If its unsuccessful I’ll be coming home to Canada in July, but hopefully all will go well and I’ll be able to stay until December/January and get a nice little vacation to Nepal along the way. I think I'm going in mid to late June.

Tufon

Suddenly the world outside the Bahai House turned orange. The sky, the very air itself. It was as though I was wearing orange tinted glasses. The sound of rushing wind sprang up and the doors began to slam.

“Tufon!” One of them shouted at me. I knew that word – Storm. It was a dust storm.

Outside the air was thick. I stepped outside for a moment, holding my dupatta in front of my mouth and nose. My glasses held off some of the dust but I was still wiping my eyes for ten minutes afterwards. I came in to find my computer covered in a thin layer of sand.

After the dust storm there was a heavy rainfall, which was very pleasant. Unfortunately in India it seems that whenever the weather does something unpredictable there is a price to pay. I think around ninety people died, mostly from having their houses fall on them.

All the weather lately has been unseasonable. We’ve had several storms and rainfalls and the temperature has gotten very lovely. The cool wind from all the storms we’ve been having wafts into our room at night in a way that should be taken as the hallmark of all wafting.

End of an Era

On Monday our teacher training course ended. I’m actually a bit relieved because I was constantly being distracted by people during that period and I can now fully concentrate on my work.

And I think that’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been really relieved that I could concentrate on my work. It’s still a little vexing when I’m writing the sixth draft of a chapter, but it’s more then worth it for the sweet sweet knowledge that I am writing, and I am being paid for it.

Yes it’s true that I only make 500 rupees (that’s ten dollars) a month, but the money doesn’t matter, and that’s actually quite a lot in India. Besides I'm volunteering here and didn't expect to get paid in the first place. What matters is that I am writing for a living. The satisfaction I feel when I finally do finish the chapter, is something I never received from school.

Anyways we’re back to working in the office. On Sunday Danielle is leaving and a few days later Melody is following suit.

P.S. I’ve put some more photos up in the posts, “A Day in the Life”, “Barabunki”, “Click, Click Vroom”, and “The Woman’s Room”

Notes on Varanasi Posts

All right all my Varanasi posts are up. Obviously they start at One and go to Eight. If you want to see the pictures in better quality/bigger just click on them and you should go to a seperate page with just the picture on it.

Varanasi Eight - Finale

Now I’ll give you an example of the part of hospitality I don’t enjoy. We were slowly making our way back to the house when someone suggested mango juice. I was stuffed and said I wouldn’t have any. Well, they wouldn’t have any of that. I had to say at least seven times, and in the end extremely severely that I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want any mango juice. I sat down at the mango stall content in my mango-lessness. Suddenly I saw one of the people with us make a gesture towards me, and covertly order another mango juice. I had to quickly step in before the shopkeeper could pour the glass. I didn’t want any mango juice!

The problem with their hospitality is that I often don’t actually want it. There were several times during the trip that I would much rather have been left alone to scrape a few hours of sleep instead of being fed or given a pile of gifts to choose from. I’ve had this experience multiple times in India. They want to be hospitable so much, that you are obliged to take what they’re offering. In Canada if I said I didn’t want mango juice my companions would ask, “Are you sure?” And when I affirmed my choice they would accept it. But because all that these Indians give is out of kindness you can neither refuse them, nor nurse any feelings of anger.

We finally made it back to Rohit’s house. I was ready to go to sleep then and there. Instead we stayed up talking, and Rohit’s sister did some henna on my hand, while Melody got dressed up in a beautiful saree. By the time the henna was done I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. Rohit’s sister then began showing us family photos, then things she had knitted, and then gave both Melody and I necklaces. We were given a supper of chipatis, rice, dahl and subsi (vegetables). What can you do in this stream of hospitality when all you want to do is sleep?





At long last we settled down to sleep – inside this time - at about midnight. I dropped off like a rock. We woke up again at about three in the morning, said our good byes and bustled off to the train station.

Before the train left we grabbed some junk food to tide us over for breakfast and then we all had a nice nap of about two and half hours. We played a bit more pictionary and dozed intermittently. Outside our air-conditioned coach was a small passage with the bathroom stalls on either side and a door open to the Indian countryside. Melody and I leaned out and looked down the train to see other heads and hands peeping out. We stood for a while and watched the countryside go by. Fields sprinkled with tan coloured huts and green trees swept by us.



There’s no transportation quite like a train. You pass through the back of a country; you see the little lives of little people in little villages trundle by. You see it all and yet you’re not a part of it.

Varanasi Seven

We returned once more to Rohit’s house and visited with his family and neighbours. We had some more snacks, and watched a bit of television. Rohit, Melody and I climbed onto the highest point of their house and gazed at the jagged brick horizon. An Indian city is not like a Canadian town, with it’s low profile, it’s cookie-cutter houses that only come in tope, white and pale green. An Indian city is made of a thousand angles, a thousand layers. It is made of brick, stone, plaster, cement, wood, dung and rubble. It is a vast polygon, a chaos of geometry. It is made of a million stories.



We did not go out again until the sun had begun to set. This was our last jaunt of the trip, and we were going back to the Ganges. This time we took Rohit’s sister, and several of his friends. We walked a ways then caught a couple of bicycle rickshaws. However we got caught in a traffic jam and took off on foot.

Every single night, there is a festival at the Ganges River. It’s not a festival with a name, it’s a festival because of its air, the air of thousands of people singing, clapping, laughing praying, clicking cameras, and buying trinkets. It’s an air of excitement, and it took us with it as we laughed down the massive stone steps towards the water.

All along the shore priests in sets of eight perform a ritual to praise the Ganges River. They dressed in fabulous outfits consisting of an orange top with a cream sash and loose cream pants. They stood on slightly raised platforms with a little table in front of them laden with their equipment, lights shining on them and a vast crowd surrounding them. The priests held the same flaming chalice I mentioned earlier and simultaneously moved their brands in circles. They went through the ritual slowly and steadily. At one point they would put down the flaming chalice and pick up an ostrich feather fan, or some other item and go through similar, slow movements.



Hospitality is not a lost art in India. However, while many would give it universal praise I find that the sword sometimes has two edges. At this point I’ll give an example of the good part, an example of India’s spirit of spontaneous generosity. I was frantically trying to take pictures of these priests while my camera was obstinately rejecting the newly purchased Indian batteries. I gave it up for a lost cause and put my camera away. Rohit asked me what kind of batteries I usually used. I told him I had had Duracell batteries before, and turned back to watch the priests. Two minutes later Rohit’s best friend pops up with a package of Duracell batteries. There were no stalls nearby, and I have no clue where he found them. Not only that but I’m sure that brand of battery would be rather expensive for him. This was only one small example of the kind of generosity these people showed us, purchasing things with their dearly earned money that would have cost us less than a dollar, and refusing our coin and letting us stay at their small home.

After watching the ritual for a while we walked down the stone walkway a bit. We entered another temple, this one low and almost gaudy with orange paint and tinsel. As we left Rohit’s sister gave us each a bindi, that red dot you sometimes see Indian’s wearing. Different marks have different meanings such as marriage etc. but apparently that one was just a culture thing.

Bindi-ied and in fine spirits we entered another building. This one was a shop owned by a friend of Rohit’s family. Varanasi is famous for producing a special kind of Saree using real silver and gold threads. We were shown several great swaths of fabric. Now you know me, I’ve never been the sort to goggle over cloth, but this was truly beautiful fabric with gorgeous embroidery.



After this we left the shores of the Ganges and walked back into the city. We went into one of the narrow lanes and wound our way to a street-side shop that made good south-Indian food. I’m not too fond of Indian food but this was good stuff. We ate it sitting on a little stone ledge with someone’s laundry hanging over us, surrounded by people and spice racks. One of the charming things about India is that feeling of comfortable casualness.

Varanasi Six

This time we took Rohit’s nephew and another friend of his with us. We hopped in an auto rickshaw, which took us to a town just outside of Varanasi. Our next stop was one of the four holy places in Buddhism, the site where the Buddha give his first sermon to his disciples. It was amazing to think that I was walking on the same ground that Buddha had walked on around four thousand years ago.



There were several temples in a row. The first we visited was a large stone temple with two smaller towers in the front and a larger one in the back. Of course we had to take our shoes off and the stone paving blocks outside the temple were blisteringly hot. We quickly hopped into the main structure. It was a large rectangular room, with a high ceiling. The far end had a railing sectioning off the back portion of the hall in which a statute of the Buddha sat on a raised platform surrounded by flowers, and other ornaments. Apparently there was a silver casket involved in which were relics, but I was not quite sure where that was, or what was in it. An elaborate painting detailing the Buddha’s life covered the other three walls. It was done by a Japanese artist and it was interesting to see the combined influence of Japanese and Indian art in the painting.

We went outside, Melody and I once more hopping over the burning stones while our Indian friends walked across it coolly. There was a side structure and we initially thought we had to go there barefoot. Melody and I set out bravely. I was thinking about those people who walk over beds of hot coals. Then we passed from the shade of the temple to the stones that were being directly heated by the sun, and we both immediately hobbled back to our shoes.

Luckily for us we found out that we could go into the next area wearing shoes, we just couldn’t walk on certain raised stones. This area was a sort of courtyard surrounding a Bodhi tree. This was the exact area the Buddha apparently gave his first sermon and the tree was apparently a descendant of that original tree. We weren’t allowed to walk on the stones directly surrounding the tree but it was amazing just to be there. I feel extremely fortunate that I, not even a Buddhist, have been able to see such a holy place, while I’m sure that there are millions of Buddhists who would give anything to be there.



The next building in the row was a temple dedicated the Buddha and the Fifth Buddha. Just as Christians believe in the return of Christ, and the Jews believe in a coming messiah, the Buddhists believe in a return of Buddha know as the Fifth Buddha among other things. The temple was a small building with a slightly Japanese design and two identical gold Buddha statues, one, which was supposed to represent the original Buddha, and the other representing the Fifth Buddha.



There was one final structure that we looked at in the strip. It was a large stone tower, almost utterly unadorned, vast and mountainous, seated on a green lawn. Apparently some parts of the Buddha’s body are interred there.

Varanasi Five

We rode through the campus to our destination, the tallest and one of the most beautiful temples of Varanasi, the marble temple. The top of the structure consisted of carved marble towers while the bottom was made of a pale, rose coloured stone. The gardens were well kept and adorned with statues and small marble pavilions where people were praying or doing yoga. We deposited our shoes and entered the main part of the temple, a large marble hall painted with patterns in vibrant colours. Bells hung from the doorways, which people would jump up and ring. Music drifted through the whole building from a pair of musicians seated on a carpet. We went up a staircase and wandered about the second floor, where the walls were interspersed with carvings of religious scenes and quotations, some actually in English though horribly translated. Several alcoves had elaborate statues of gods and goddesses to which people were praying. The worshippers would touch the steps, or doorways of the rooms they entered, and left the holy places walking respectfully backwards, so as not to show their backs to these centres of devotion. We sat on the balcony for sometime, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere and the beautiful carvings on the central tower. As we left we walked past a man in orange robes, kneeling at the doorway singing the sacred ‘Ohm’ syllable. I realized it was the first time I had heard someone do that in earnest, and not in jest.



It was starting to get hot although it was only nine thirty or so. We took the rickshaw back to Rohit’s house. Rohit led us around the area to meet his neighbours and then we went to sleep for a couple of hours. When we woke up we had some samosas and visited his family for a short while before leaving for our next stop.

Varanasi Four

We alighted just before a small castle. It had ornate towers made of pale orange brick, wonderfully set off by a green bush growing around the top. We then left the river side and wandered through the streets for a while, grabbing some biscuits along the way. The three of us made our way to a Hindu temple, the first I’ve ever been in. We entered through a large yellow gateway and moved down a long walkway. We gave our shoes to the shoe-keepers and watched the tens of monkeys that ran and climbed on either side of the walkway’s railings. Soon we came to a space floored with marble and made up of several small buildings and sections. There were several statues, and a sacred tree. People walked around slowly, or sat and prayed. No matter what religious temple you go to, when people are praying with a certain degree of faith, and when the facilities are upheld, one get’s a sense of beauty and serenity.

We did a quick perambulation of the grounds and then left. Next we caught a bicycle rickshaw, which took us to a university. Along the way the rickshaw driver tried to convince Rohit that we should pay him more than the average fair, because we were foreigners and could pay more. We went under a large archway and suddenly the cement and brick city passed away to a well-paved street lined with luscious green trees, some with bright red blossoms. The university campus was vast, and the buildings very beautiful with ornate towers vaguely resembling those on the temples. They were a warm yellow with red trim and situated on vibrant lawns dotted with gardens and even a few peacocks. After the dust and dung of the city it was exquisitely beautiful.

Varanasi Three

My first view of the river was over the head of a vast crowd. The bank of the river on the city side was a giant stone staircase stretching into the distance. Hundreds of boats of different sizes and shapes were moored along the staircase. The far side was a white beach with a few shacks on it. We came out between two temples and descended the staircase to see a host of scenes, any of which would have been a spectacle in Canada. A man stands on a small stone platform in orange robes with a flaming chalice in his hand, which he waves in a circle. An old man sits underneath a straw umbrella and paints people’s faces with symbolic patterns – another Hindu/Indian custom. The Ganges River is filthy and dark green. People throw dead bodies into it sometimes, and I’m pretty sure it’s connected to the sewer system. Yet people swim in it, because it’s supposed to purify their sins. They wash clothes in it, whacking them against flat stones on the shoreline.











We decided to take a boat up the river a bit. We ended up on a small rowboat paddled by a fifteen-year-old boy. Our boat almost smacking into one man who was standing shirtless up to his chest praying in the water, but he calmly pushed us aside. We passed several other boats some laden with tourists. In fact I saw more foreigners in that one day in Varanasi then I’ve seen in my whole time in Lucknow. We enjoyed watching the stone buildings pass by, hostels, hotels, pensions and temples. At one point we saw maybe seventy people in white robes lined up for a photo with some famous guru in orange robes. They all sang and pumped their fists in time. Melody chatted a bit with the kid, discussing his school and his ambitions. She takes delight in meeting people spontaneously and getting to know a slice of their lives.

Varanasi Two

We rose at around four in the morning (so that’s about three hours of sleep). I awoke with the stars still over my head. Our goal was to see the famous Ganges River at sunrise so we hastily dressed and walked into the city.



Varanasi is a lot like Lucknow in many ways. The streets are still clogged with rickshaws and signs are put up like wallpaper to hide chipped plaster or grey concrete buildings. But Varanasi has three unique properties, or at least three that I experienced. The first is the narrow lanes. The second is the temples.



The city is a holy city, a place of pilgrimage and there are temples on just about every street. The temples are usually painted red or bright orange and range in size from a closet to a cathedral. Some are little orange fences erected around trees, which are sacred for some reason or other, while others contain carved statues. The little ones tend to have pyramidal roofs while the large ones have these tall, roughly conical towers rich in carving.

We made our way through the grey dawn, stopping briefly at Rohit’s high school. Soon we met with the crowd of people going to do just what we were going to do: see the Ganges. We asked Rohit to explain the reason why it is a holy river but I think we were still both confused. If you're interested I'd advise you to google it and read several different versions of the story and take mine with a vast pinch a salt. If you’re going to go around telling people why the river is supposed to be holy, don’t use this description.

Apparently one of the gods had a kind of water container and in this water container was the sacred Ganges water. A saint prayed that the holy Ganges could come to earth but if the God had poured the entire container onto the earth, the planet would have been destroyed. So instead he poured the water onto Lord Shiva’s (another God) hair. The water dripped down his hair and Lord Shiva allowed the dripping from one of his hairs to touch the earth and it created the Ganges.

Varanasi One

I recently returned from my trip to Varanasi, one of the most famous and holy cities of India.

Rohit, Melody and I left work early at four thirty and took a bicycle rickshaw to the train station. The three train stations I’ve seen in India all look relatively similar. In Canada if you see someone sleeping on the ground in a public place they’re a bum, a hobo, one of the lowest rung of society. In India it’s a perfectly common thing. In the station hundreds of people sleep on thin blankets or newspapers. The stations are crowded, dirty and incredibly stinky right near the tracks.

The trains in India have sections just like in a plane. I’ve heard plenty of stories about the third class coaches, in which people are packed so close that they can’t move, even to use the bathroom. Imagine standing in one place, surrounded by people and burdened with luggage for eight hours. Suffice it to say we took the first class seats. The first class coaches have ample legroom and air-conditioning. It was Rohit’s first time in first class and he found it very cold. We noticed that all the people in first class were relatively heavy, compared to the people in third class. In India having a certain amount of weight is sometimes seen as a sign of wealth, since only rich people can afford to eat that much.




We spent most of the six-hour train ride playing pictionary, which resulted in much hilarity. We left Lucknow at about six and arrived in Varanasi at around midnight. On the train we had only gotten about forty-five minutes of sleep so we were understandably tired as we stepped into Varanasi.

It was midnight. We hopped on a rickshaw and quickly left the busy train station behind. The streets were almost empty. After a while we got out on foot, and passed from the wider streets into the narrow lanes. These were entire neighbourhoods of skinny streets winding on for kilometres. The flagstone ground was uneven, the buildings old and geometric. We finally came to Rohit’s family house.

Rohit has an extremely lovely family, and he considered everyone in his neighbourhood as a member of his family. In his house we met his father, mother, sister, sister-in-law, and brother. We had dinner of chipatis (round flat bread), a vegetable dish and yoghurt. I was exhausted at this point and eventually we settled down to sleep on the flat rooftop at about one thirty in the morning. In India the rooftops are made to stand on, with railings and clothing lines. It was beautifully cool up there and I was overjoyed to see a large amount of stars for the first time since I had arrived in India. In Lucknow only a few stars can pierce the bowl of smog that the city sits in. They had spread blankets on the floor for us and I slept with my dupatta (the obligatory scarf part of my outfit) wrapped around me as a mosquito net. I expected to be bitten but it was worth it to go to sleep with stars overhead.

I got twenty-nine mosquito bites.

Just A Quick Note

I've finally figured out how to properly get pictures on this thing so my Varanasi posts will have pics and I'll slowly begin filling in the rest of the blogs.

If you go to the post about my time in Delhi (I think it's the third post) I put up a picture of myself and Vahid in front of the lotus temple. Yes, I know I have a weird expression on my face, but my glasses are just so cool.

Busy, Busy

I returned from Varanasi on Sunday annd I've got one hundred and thirty pictures and a seven page writeup to share. However it's taken me considerable time to organize all that and this week has been very busy so you guys may have to wait until your Friday, my Saturday.

On Tuesday we were invited to dinner, yesterday I had to accompany Melody on a trip to buy her family gifts before she leaves, and after that we had a youth deepening. Today we're going to Sohayl's mother's house for supper and on Friday there's a Feast.

Vignettes of Friendship

Between the middle and the end of this month Danielle and Melody are departing India. I thought now would be a good time to present you with some vignettes of the times we spend together, so you can understand what it will mean when they leave.

I have never seen someone smile as often as Melody smiles. My often-dry humour, which would elicit only a smirk or chuckle in many, sends her bursting into laughter. She sings all the time. It’s nice to have another Canadian around. We’ve had fun sharing memories of the Great White North, and she’s been kind enough to teach me some Hindi. (She was in a different part of India for sixth months before she came here, so she picked up a bit.)

Danielle shares my interest in movies, which neither Melody nor the Mohajer family really watch. There’s a western style coffee shop called Café Coffee Day and we went there once to splurge on chocolate cake and other western goods. Melody and the Mohajer’s are essentially in love with India so it’s nice to have someone around who likes the western world too.

I’ve also made friendships to various degrees with the Indian youth here. Rohit’s nineteen years old and has a degree in hardware. We’ve had a lot of fun talking about computers and he’s teaching me a thing or two. It initially took me a while to understand his accent but he’s actually very good at English and making Melody and I laugh. The three of us have gone on some wonderful walks around Lucknow, down the busy streets, or through the smaller lanes. And next weekend he’s taking Melody and I to Varanassi on a sight seeing trip, where we’ll see the famous holy river, the Gangi and some temples.

I’m also friendly with a lot of the other youth, like Sumit, Nadeem and Ritu. Yesterday Rohit, Melody, Sumit, Nadeem and I completed Ruhi 7. I was riding on the back of the motorcycle, with Rohit driving. Nadeem and Melody were on one scooter, Sumit on another. Sometimes we were in the lead, sometimes it was one of them, as we weaved between the traffic and swerved round corners. The wind dashed against my face. We laughed and Sumit and I high-fived across the rushing, cracked pavement. It’s times like that that India rocks.

Tough Skin

One of the things I was really looking forward to about India was being edited. When you’re a writer, you need tough skin; you need to be able to take harsh criticism with grace, and an open mind. I came here hoping to develop some calluses.

Imagine labouring for a hours and hours on a document, handing it to Sohayl, and getting it back almost completely covered in yellow – the bits he doesn’t like – and red – his additions/changes. In the beginning it was very painful, but I tried to take it with an almost masochistic smile, knowing that I was toughening my skin.

Now a days I’ve gotten almost used to writing three or four completely different versions of a chapter and then editing the best one until I can barely pick out my own sentences, from Sohayl’s and our hybrid bits. Now a days, I feel happy if I find a paragraph of mine intact when the chapter is done.

Part of the reason why it takes two or three drafts is my own poor writing, but part of it is also just the process. Usually Sohayl and I talk a bit about what is needed in the chapter, and then I write something. After reading it we realize that we either had different views of what needed to be in the lesson, or that there is a better way to do it.

I have to say that while the process is enlightening, and enjoyable in its own way, it is very constraining. I’m used to writing novels, which means I have over three hundred pages to go in depth into whatever I want to say, to cover all the angles, and subtly develop the points. Furthermore there’s no age restraint, no need to pull any punches, or make things ‘nice’. In a book which will be taught in schools to young teenagers you can’t really cover issues in a gritty way, which is the way I tend to want to portray things. But even this is a useful constraint, because in my writing career I’ll undoubtedly have to compromise.