| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 07 February 2005 |
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I wish to hell I'd
seen more of my own world before I volunteered to try any others.'
Eventually the young man takes the advice, and the story ends with him
asking, 'So, what brought you to Benares?'
Mark claims, however, that if what you want is Vrathub, you *still*
have to go to other planets, since you cannot find it on Earth and Vrathub
might be the best reason to travel of all. What is Vrathub? Mark says,
How should I know? You can't find it on Earth.
Note that the question So, what brought you to Benares? is not the
same question as, Why do you want to go to India?--a question to which
Evelyn's answer is, If you can ask that, I can't explain it. Throughout
this trip (well, so far anyway), she's been trying to look at this as an
alien culture in the sense of trying to see its rules and customs as the
basis rather than to see it as a series of modifications to our (European)
culture which rose from our rules and customs. How successful she will be
remains to be seen; she does occasionally lapse into the thought, Well,
this is a really silly/inefficient way or doing things (meaning, of course,
Why don't they do things for *my* benefit?).
The other story Evelyn says she was reminded of at the burning ghat was
Joel Rosenberg's story, The Emigrant. As she describes it, In this, a
Kohan (a descendent of the Jewish priestly class) is explaining why he is
leaving for the moon. Kohanim are subject to much stronger purity laws than
other Jews and one is that they may not enter a cemetery. The main
character explains that because crematoria at the Nazi concentration camps
put the ash into the global air patterns, effectively the entire Earth is a
graveyard. I wonder if the cremations at Varanasi haven't had the same
effect. (Of course, this is true of most cremations--only recently did
people start collecting the ash in urns.) Still, it's an effective story.
About this time it started to rain. Our guide led us to a shrine to
Shiva in a nearby building. The shrines are always open to visitors. He
told us a little about the shrine, but mostly we were waiting for the rain
to stop. Evelyn asked our guide if the rains here are short or long. The
guide told her, Lady, I am not God. We don't know how long we sat in the
dark foyer. It was probably about forty-five minutes. We even had a power
failure. Two or three times a day the power goes out for one to five
minutes. This is a Third World country after all. There is a fair amount
of work to keeping a power system tuned. Where we live we lose power
about once a month. Here you lose it several times a day.
While we waited, we watched the man from the house uphill from us use
this opportunity to clean his steps and the area in front of his house by
using a brush and the force of the water flowing downhill to clear all the
debris and dirt off, which ended up just downhill from him (and eventually
would end up in the Ganges, one supposes).
Finally we ventured into the alleys. There are a few wide streets for
cars. Mostly you have alleys to get around. Some are fifteen feet wide;
some are as little as four or five feet. Some are only three. Cows and
bulls wander freely, making walking not wholly sanitary. Max was given a
chance to pray at the Golden Temple, but he would have had to go barefoot
and he was less than happy about the prospect. He told the guide he would
pray a later day when he could take his shoes off at the door of the temple
instead of across the street. The rain had been surprisingly heavy,
particularly since this is not supposed to be a rainy month. It served to
distribute the cow dung around the alley. The prospect indeed did not sound
good.
Well, eventually the rain let up enough that we could head back to our
taxi. Our guide suggested that on the way we could go to a great guru who
could tell our fortune. We were less than keen. We wanted to get back.
Little did we know that our future held danger! And a voyage by water. We
found that out just moments later when we got to the street and found it
flooded to as much as two feet deep. We had left the car parked in the
street and now it was parked in a river. We could not get to our taxi
without going wading, an unhappy prospect considering how dirty the water
probably was. We turned and went back to another alley that opened onto the
main street only to find the water just as high. Still we could not signal
our driver. We puzzled for a while about what to do. There was a path to
the taxi where the water was only six inches deep, but it would still mean a
soaking. There was a stack of bricks and Mark considered making stepping
stones, but that would have been a difficult way to do it. Finally Evelyn
took off her shoes and waded to the taxi. The driver backed it up nearly to
the sidewalk, but not near enough. To bridge the distance a cycle-rickshaw
moved into the gap. It was a mess but we could climb on the rickshaw, cross
over to the taxi, and make it to the door. Evelyn moved to the front seat
and the other three of us climbed in back. The cycle-rickshaw driver then
wanted a tip, so Evelyn gave him Rs5. He seemed unhappy, but that's
actually high considering he didn't have to pedal anywhere.
Well, okay, we were in the taxi and not being rained on. (Oh, we paid
the guide Rs100 and he seemed satisfied--or realized that we weren't going
to stand in the rain listening to him if we weren't.) Then we started back
in the taxi that was part boat. In two feet of water it drove through the
crowded streets. After a while, water started leaking into the taxi and the
floor flooded. Evelyn doesn't know what kind of car this taxi was (it
seemed to be something called a PAL, and about thirty-five years old), but
she wants one for her next car. We drove through deep water like this for
twenty minutes and the engine just kept going. The brakes were a little
poor, however.
Throughout all this people were wading along and cycle-rickshaws and
bicycles were still going, but most cars and taxis decided to wait out the
flood, or had to. It was a most amazing sight to see all the traffic
proceeding through knee-deep water. Miraculously, we made it back to the
hotel about 5:30 PM without any mishaps and decided to up the driver's fare
to Rs200 for all he went through. Our jovial host was at the hotel door
amazed at the rain. Not even during the monsoon season had it rained like
it had today. October is usually a dry month. He had never seen a rain
like this in October.
We looked at the weather forecast in the morning's paper. Hot and
humid, but no rain for all of Uttar Pradesh. Total rainfall since June was
zero inches. It must have been a very dry monsoon season. The rain saved
itself up and all fell on us. We explained to Max and Staci about Luck of
Leeper. They had found the idea very funny. That is the first stage:
finding the idea funny. Most of our friends are beyond that stage and take
Luck of Leeper seriously, like any powerful and dangerous force of nature.
All Stacy could ask as we headed into the hotel was, Is it always like this
when you travel?
We invited Max and Staci to join us for dinner and we agreed to meet in
an hour, so we went to our rooms and showered.
For dinner, Evelyn had the tandoor paneer and Mark tried the lamb
Indian-style. It was okay, but a little greasy. He will probably stick to
vegetarian. Indian cuisine is the only cuisine he knows of where there is
more diversity and interest in the vegetarian dishes. We talked about
ethics and religion and film over dinner. It is funny how close they had
become as friends in about twelve hours. They seem like very nice people.
We got them to enter their names and addresses in Mark's palmtop. Then we
bid each other a good trip. We bought a bottle of water and went back to
the room where Mark wrote in his log and drank Band-ade. Band-ade is our
new nickname for tap water and iodine. Wait thirty minutes and you have
Band-ade. It tastes okay but leaves an after-taste that reminds us of the
smell of Band-aids. But it is safe to drink and can quench a thirst.
Mark woke up a couple of times in the night but fell back asleep. He
is sleeping much better than Evelyn.
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Another restless night, but at least we were able to
sleep to a reasonable hour. Evelyn had porridge again for breakfast. Mark
had stuffed paratha and curds. The flavor is much like potato pancake with
sour cream.
Our destination this morning is two temples that are open to non-
Hindus. (The Lonely Planet guide mentions that advertising for tourism
emphasizes all the beautiful temples, but fails to mention that most of
tourists won't be allowed in. However, in Varanasi there are a couple of
exceptions.) One is the Bharat Mata Mandir (Mother India Temple) and the
other is the Tulsi Manis Mandir. Both are fairly unusual as temples go. We
hired a taxi and set out once again on the roads. Mark says, I have been
taking a closer look at the buildings to try to put his finger on exactly
what makes one think of poverty when one sees these perfectly serviceable
houses. They look, in fact, a lot like the houses in which people live in
Thailand or the Dominican Republic. You see a lot of scrap metal being used
as roofs or awnings. Lots of times the building materials are falling
apart. There is a lot that is dilapidated and that is unlikely to get a
repair really soon. Sanitation is minimal and here India seems one of the
least advanced places we have visited. In many of the streets a sewer in
front of the houses is the only concession made to sanitation. That is
unusual; in Thailand and in the Dominican Republic outhouses usually replace
the sewers more often. This also may be why the recommendation against
street food is so strong here and so weak for places like Thailand. Now, of
course, we have seen only a small part of each country. It may well be that
Varanasi is not typical. I suppose at the time that it made a difference if
you pack people tightly into an urban area or have more out away from the
city where there is sufficient space for outhouses, but this later proved
untrue. Also, we may be talking about very poor urban neighborhoods.
But we were talking about the Bharat Mata Mandir. We haven't the
foggiest idea what makes it a temple. You take your shoes off to enter, but
there is nothing religious inside. Zero. What is inside is a huge relief
map of India and the surrounding areas. It is made of marble and is forty
or fifty feet square. One thing you learn is how flat most of India is and
how suddenly the mountains to the north spring up. Mark tends to question
if the mountains were not a bit exaggerated, both in angle and in height.
(He thinks the bases are to scale, but the height is to a different scale.)
The sides of the mountains went up at seventy-degree angles. Everest was
shown as about five inches high or more. It is actually five miles high.
If the map is fifty feet across, that is six hundred inches. Then India
would be only six hundred miles across. Clearly the mountains were
exaggerated in height. There are also tablets showing you the roots of
written Hindi. And you can climb down stairs to look flat across the relief
map.
There were some boys outside watching shoes (for a tip). Were they
supposed to be in school? Schools were open, at least the private school we
passed where dozens of girls in uniform were arriving on foot, on bicycle,
or in cycle-rickshaws. In general there seemed to be a lot of school-age
boys around during the day, so we don't know if school is optional or if
they just don't care that it's mandatory. |
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