“Like all rich people, Keith lived in fear of being exploited.”

Tony Sanchez, “Up and Down with the Rolling Stones.”




The Ganges River originates in the Himalayan foothills in north-central India, and flows roughly south-east for about twelve hundred miles, emptying into the Bay of Bengal near Calcutta and Bangladesh in a massive, hydra-like delta known as ‘The Mouths of the Ganges.’ Along the way, approximately halfway between New Delhi and Calcutta, sits the city of Varanasi.

Varanasi is the holiest city in the Hindu religion. It is roughly to Hinduism what Mecca is to Islam or Jerusalem is to Christianity. It contains, officially, about a million people, but Indian cities always seem to consist of a large number of ‘unofficial’ people. Varanasi’s proximity to the sacred Ganges is what gives it its significance.

I arrived there by train early in the morning, about six or so. The town stretches back from the banks of the Ganges like New Westminster does from the Fraser, except unlike New Westminster the land stays flat. The Ganges is about as wide as the Fraser. The oldest part of the town is near the river, a labyrinthine maze of narrow, twisting streets and exotic, Indiana Jones-like midaeval buildings.

The train station is about a couple of miles from the shore. I had read about a guest house, right down on the shore of the Ganges, that was noted for being reasonable and reliable. I decided to walk. I would have had to haggle for a motor-rickshaw, and the negotiating that seemed to be part of every frigging transaction was wearing me out.

I was also getting the distinct impression that I was something of a walking dollar sign. A few weeks earlier, in the western town of Jaisalmer, I had paid a kid about five rupees after he guided me to a hotel. I saw him the next day, and he recognized me.

“Five rupees to walk down that street,” he said as I wandered down a little alleyway. He ran after me.

“Five rupees to look at that building.”

Things got wose in New Delhi. After being swarmed by shoeshine boys day after day, I finally relented, figuring that once I got my footwear polished they would lay off. The next day a kid came up to me, telling me he’d shine my shoes for two rupees.

“I had them shined yesterday,” I said trumping him. “I don’t need them shined.”

“They don’t look shined,” he said, shaking his head. “I can do a better job.”

“No no no. They’re perfectly fine.”

“They’re still very dirty. I use special polish. I’ll make them look much better.”

This went on for a few exasperating minutes, with the kid running beside me the whole time.

“Look,” I said to him finally. “They’re fine the way they are. I like them the way they are.”

“You like them the way they are?”

“Yes.”

“You like them like that?”

“Yes.”

“You like them dirty?”

“Yes,” I sighed wearily.

“For two rupees,” he said with a smile, “I can make them dirtier.”

Getting right down to the shore of the Ganges may not have been possible by rickshaw in any case. There was a huge crush of people coming back along the main road from the river, even at the early hour. In fact, the early morning is a busy time, as many people bathe in the river at first light. There was also a major Hindu festival going on. I got down there by foot, and found the place I wanted.

That night, I sat on the roof of the guest house with a small cadre of travellers, looking down on the murky silhouette of the Ganges. There was a very beautiful girl from Naples; she had darkish skin but blue eyes, who said that the guesthouse was "verry seeemple but verrry goood.” There were a few standoffish English people. There were two haggard forty-something Austrian guys who spent chemical summers in Khatmandu and relatively non-toxic winters in India (“we come down here to cleanse our systems,” said one of them to me), and a guy from Montreal, happily the only Canadian I met in India, who was carting around an accoustic guitar that he scarcely how to play. He was French, and though he knew a bit of Pink Floyd, he asked me to show him some other songs. I chose 'Come Together,' by the Beatles, intending no significance; it was the only one that came to mind.

And then, as it got very dark, an enchanting event unfolded. Imagine the Illuminaires festival at Trout Lake. Then multiply all the laterns you would see there by ten or twenty or thirty times. Then imagine all of them being placed on tiny rafts or floats, and set adrift on a river in the dark. That’s what happened. They looked like a flowing constellation of stars, some big, some small, making their way past the shadowy shores of a very ancient and exotic city.

In the morning I would get up early. My room was on the ground floor, and it had it’s own shower, which was a bit of a luxury. I would go up to the roof, and hang out until this local kid, apparently known as ‘the boy,’ would show up and take orders for breakfast.

I had been in the country for a while, and knew enough to order ‘black tea,’ as opposed to ‘tea,’ which would in fact get me a cup of chai, the milky, sugary version of tea common in India. I learned that if you wanted toast, you asked for ‘toastbutterjam,’ so that you would get something to put on the toast as well as the toast itself.

I didn’t order omelettes or eggs of any kind, out of a sort of respect for the proprietors, who were clearly vegitarian. They offered omelettes as part of the unofficial menu, but seemed uncomfortable about making them. I decided to be a vegetarian for the time I was in the city, and it seemed, along with the fact that I didn’t smoke pot, to endear me to the owners of the guest house.

I spent a number of days in Varanasi, generally wandering around by the river, through the old town, and simply sitting on the roof, soaking the sun and observing all the activity below me.

Much of it centred around the ghats. A ghat is a series of steps leading right down into the river; the bottom steps are actually under the water. There are bathing ghats and burning ghats. Burning ghats are the sites of cremations. Bodies are burned at the edge of the river and the ashes usually scattered into the Ganges.

The purpose of fire is to cleanse the soul on the way to heaven. The bodies of young children are not burned as they are deemed to be pure already. I took a ride on a little rowboat one day at dawn, and was stunned to see the body of a dead baby boy float past the boat.

In the boat with me were a middle-aged English couple. The man was so complete a caricature of the pompous Englishman that it hardly seemed possible that he even existed. His wife wore tan fatigues and a pith helmet. Back on the banks of the river, we numbly dug into our pockets to pull out a couple of hundred rupees or so for the boatman. I wasn’t sure if we had given him enough.

“We just paid him the equivalent of a month’s wages for the average person in this country,” said the English man protested to me. “Oh, I don’t care,” he then shrugged. “Pay him what you want.”

A day later I was heading out. I figured I’d go to Darjeeling, up in the Himalayan foothills. I asked the owner of the guesthouse how to get to the train station. He gave me directions.

“You’ll have to get a motorickshaw,” he said. I asked him how much I should pay, telling him that Indian motorickshaw drivers seemed to be getting the better of me.

“About ten rupees,” he said. “Maybe twelve at the most. If you want, I can send the boy with you to negotiate.”

I sheepishly told him no thanks. I made my way through the maze of old town streets to a plaza full of taxis and rickshaws, and found one to take me to the station.

I paid twelve rupees, the equivalent of 50 cents. I was pleased with myself that had I paid no more.