Varanasi

Varanasi is holy ground.

The old, the sick, the young: thousands upon thousands of people flock the river Ganges at Varanasi to wash their sins away in the cold light of early morning. They pick their way precariously down the Ghats, a set of large stairs built on the shoreline leading into the river, strip to their undergarments and wash. In India it is terribly embarrassing to be naked, ever, and sometimes even spouses never see each other wholly naked. The men wash in white shorts worn underneath their pants, the women in their bright saris. Paradoxically, everyone is bathing in the same space, but no one is embarrassed.

Every year, tens of thousands of Hindis come here to die. The Ghats furthest upriver and downriver at Varanasi are reserved for cremation pyres. Indians from all over the country, sometimes the world, come here in the last days of their lives to wash the sins from their bodies and meet the afterlife in peace. Bodies and ashes are transported here to be dumped into the Ganges. Sometimes improperly weighted bodies show up on the shore opposite after times of heavy rain.

At sunrise I mutely observe this spectacle. Diamond tours has reserved me a morning boat ride, which I share with a pair of Canadians. A single oarsman paddles us up the river, giving a quiet narration. Boats full of other tourists and opportunistic Indians selling floating flower and candle decorations surround us.

As we make our way up the river, I notice six massive sewage outflow pipes above the final burning Ghat. I remember reading somewhere that the Ganges has the highest fecal matter content of any river anywhere.

The combination of expensive telephoto lenses, burning bodies, trinket hawkers and devout Indians washing their sins away in sewer water ignites a visceral reaction in me. My head swims with the contradictions and I have to put a hand on the edge of the boat to keep my balance.

Our boatman begins to sing softly in Hindi. The sun rises as a dull red orb over the eastern horizon. A crowd of people on the shore too far away to see easily step back from a burning bundle. A boat full of other tourists motors past. The world spins around me.

I felt burning shame and rage. The thousands of Hindus who bathed here every morning were at the same time subjected to armies of foreigners with cameras. The families that grieved for their dead loved ones had to beg the tour companies to keep people from taking pictures of their grief. My curiosity had lead me to perpetuate a system that exploited a people’s private faith and pain.

I had come to Varanasi hoping for some kind of revelation. I thought coming to a place that so many people thought was so sacred would fundamentally change me. I had hoped, as I always hope, to gain some wisdom from this place.

Instead I felt the hollow, empty knowledge that there was never anything here for me. 

-Doug