‘The greatest testament to love’ is what most people say. The ruler who built the Taj Mahal had in his library a book of Sufi mysticism. In this book there is a diagram of what apparently God’s throne room in heaven looks like. It just so happens that the Taj Mahal’s floor plan corresponds exactly to this throne room diagram. I’ll give you one try to guess where the ruler who built the Taj Mahal is buried. How very romantic, oh yea, his wife is buried next to him so I guess that makes it a grand testament to love. Funny that the same ruler was imprisoned by his own son and could see the Taj Mahal from his prison cell. In all honesty, as beautiful as it is, and as wonderful as the marble is, the Taj Mahal is an epic waste. In my eyes it could only be rectified if it was turned into a library. And on top of it, the inside of it smelled worse than a men’s locker room after an overtime hockey game
Monday, February 21, 2011
Varanasi
The train to the holy city was late and long and after a cold cycle rickshaw and a winding trail through narrow shit smeared lanes, cobbled and stoned, we finally got to the guesthouse. Sophie crashed into the bed and was done to the world. I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep. I decided to go for a walk.
Walking back down the crooked narrow lanes, I found myself recollecting Venice. The mismatched stone tilts and everywhere askance as the passageways, ceilinged only by narrow jagged strips of open brightening blue. Shit piss and spit cakes the ground and the foot of every wall. Dark openings appear as barbers and paan makers, trinket sellers and all the like begin the morning ritual of the day. Signs pointing me back to my guesthouse litter every corner and I feel free to meander and get lost in the sandstone colored tumult.
I come across a street lined with vegetable sellers. Old dirty wicker baskets, worn clean are filled and piled with cabbage, kale, eggplant, potatoes, carrots, and green peppers. My meandering leads to an awaiting space, empty at the end of the corridor of sellers. The cool hazy air is thick and I look into the distance, walking towards it. I cannot see the other side, and before me the ground falls out in an ordered stone procession: stone steps, the Ghats leading down to the river Ganges.
In the dim morning light the holy parallels are already speckled, spotted and down the way - up the river - teeming with people. Boats are tied in thick packs at the banks edge. Men and boys in shorts and sometimes less stand knee, thigh, chest and neck deep in water. Women still wrapped in saris submerge themselves. Holy men dot each outcropping jutting out from the Ghats. Each with elaborate colors and shapes adorning their faces and all of them with the three white lines, horizontal on their foreheads - the lines of Shiva’s soul. Most of them sit on small raised platforms with hug umbrellas, like wicker parasols poised above them pointing o the rising sun. Each has a collection of cups and jars filled with flowers and color of yellow marigold and bright red. An Indian couple sits before one on his matted platform and listen to his oracle - his blessing, with their hands joined between them.
The plop of circular magnets, tied to strings and thrown from steps dot the trickling sounds cape. Boys hurling the trinket hooks, stand at the edge of stairs and from the prows of dirt colored boats. Among the wet rustle of clothing and oars, the squawk of gulls harassing boat goers in the center of the calm river.
A snake charmer demands 20 rupees for permission of a picture. He opens a second wicker basket and hit’s the edge in the same motion, awakening a second cobra crammed in coils. It springs up to the height of the first, angry, widening its hood. Automatically and with wandering eyes he raised a buzzing flute to his lips and the sound seems to keep the snakes still, erect, starring straight at the flute’s end.
Small tin foil bowls, each shallow and filled with marigolds and red flowers with a candle centered are piled into a larger wicker basket carried atop a girl’s head. She asks for rupees in exchange for the floating tribute to the payee’s god. The floating shrines are everywhere in the water, some still with a flame tugging against the light breeze.
Across the fiver is a bare bank with only a few river boats and some people congregated. As the sun lifts, the haze clears a little and I am tempted to think it is an island. In the whitened grey distance I think I see the outline of trees on another bank.
A large woman with her husband steps carefully into the Ganges. She looks back at her husband. She is elated and I wonder if she is from some other part of India, delighted to be -finally- bathing in the Ganges. Her smile is like a child too young to be embarrassed with the exuberance of the emotion behind it. It is a mark of the Indian people- they feel no embarrassment for their emotion, smiling and scolding with honesty.
The whole city of buildings is crowded on only one side of the Ganges. And slowly I walk back to the hotel, only to find Sophie still asleep. I ascend the stairs to the rooftop restaurant, and finally feeling the high breeze, I see that I am in one of the highest points of all Varanasi. It is Sunday morning and the sky above Varanasi is filled with kites. Twitching and gliding above the city, hundreds, if not thousands of tissue diamonds fluttered - simple squares turned askance and fixed to a cross of wood, each one a different color, each one a different design.
One boy, on a rooftop near and below mine stood casually watching his kite and with quick tugs and pulls at the sagging string he rose the colored square higher into the sky.
For the next week I had breakfast on the rooftop to the sound of a light wind and the flutter of tissue paper soaring through the hazy blue sky.
We walked along the Ghats and came across a human knee, femur, fibula and tibia, the bones all cracked and charred with some of the flesh still caked and caramelized to the bone. We walked farther and came across large piles of wood and beyond them flames churned into the sky from several points on the ash covered Ghats. We stood hypnotized by the bright movement. A boy standing next to me, dressed in rip-off designer jeans, and a matching shirt with a silver cross dangling from his neck turned to us and asked us the usual questions. Where we were from. He looked at Sophie and told her she was far too white. She feigned offense and he addendumed the comment by saying that she was 'cool'. Before the cremations he offered us the opportunity to buy hashish, opium, ecstasy and every other imaginable substance. We walked to a different point of view. A man dressed in simple white clothes approached me and asked me if I knew what was going on. I had read of these charity workers and I knew he was looking for an outrageous donation. I told him I did know what was going on. He asked 'how?'. I told him I'd read about it in a book. He said I could not learn everything from a book and that he could tell me the real details of what I was looking at. I told him that I was not interested in his offer. He continued on with his salesman pitch and as I walked away he yelled "You come to a Holy City and you don't learn about Karma?". There seemed to be spite in his voice.
The day Sophie and I took a boat ride in the Ganges, I dipped a small empty bottle into the river so that I could bring it back home with me and add to my collection of water. That night I got violently sick. When I had recovered several days later, Sophie and I went for a walk along the Ghats. I dipped my toe in the water next to a man who was bathing. That night I got violently sick. The two instances are just coincidences, I'm sure, but the truth is that the Ganges is incredibly polluted to the point where one could say it is poisonous. Not only does every variety of excrement find its way into the river, and burned bodies dumped into its water, but upstream factories unload incredible amounts of heavy metals and toxins into the water making it contaminated in a plethora of ways. Then again if the air wafting through the Vatican was just as polluted, I'm sure it wouldn't stop believers from breathing in with delight and praising their god.
All in all, Varanasi was my favorite city. I already miss those mornings of drinking chai and watching the kites flutter above the city.
Walking back down the crooked narrow lanes, I found myself recollecting Venice. The mismatched stone tilts and everywhere askance as the passageways, ceilinged only by narrow jagged strips of open brightening blue. Shit piss and spit cakes the ground and the foot of every wall. Dark openings appear as barbers and paan makers, trinket sellers and all the like begin the morning ritual of the day. Signs pointing me back to my guesthouse litter every corner and I feel free to meander and get lost in the sandstone colored tumult.
I come across a street lined with vegetable sellers. Old dirty wicker baskets, worn clean are filled and piled with cabbage, kale, eggplant, potatoes, carrots, and green peppers. My meandering leads to an awaiting space, empty at the end of the corridor of sellers. The cool hazy air is thick and I look into the distance, walking towards it. I cannot see the other side, and before me the ground falls out in an ordered stone procession: stone steps, the Ghats leading down to the river Ganges.
In the dim morning light the holy parallels are already speckled, spotted and down the way - up the river - teeming with people. Boats are tied in thick packs at the banks edge. Men and boys in shorts and sometimes less stand knee, thigh, chest and neck deep in water. Women still wrapped in saris submerge themselves. Holy men dot each outcropping jutting out from the Ghats. Each with elaborate colors and shapes adorning their faces and all of them with the three white lines, horizontal on their foreheads - the lines of Shiva’s soul. Most of them sit on small raised platforms with hug umbrellas, like wicker parasols poised above them pointing o the rising sun. Each has a collection of cups and jars filled with flowers and color of yellow marigold and bright red. An Indian couple sits before one on his matted platform and listen to his oracle - his blessing, with their hands joined between them.
The plop of circular magnets, tied to strings and thrown from steps dot the trickling sounds cape. Boys hurling the trinket hooks, stand at the edge of stairs and from the prows of dirt colored boats. Among the wet rustle of clothing and oars, the squawk of gulls harassing boat goers in the center of the calm river.
A snake charmer demands 20 rupees for permission of a picture. He opens a second wicker basket and hit’s the edge in the same motion, awakening a second cobra crammed in coils. It springs up to the height of the first, angry, widening its hood. Automatically and with wandering eyes he raised a buzzing flute to his lips and the sound seems to keep the snakes still, erect, starring straight at the flute’s end.
Small tin foil bowls, each shallow and filled with marigolds and red flowers with a candle centered are piled into a larger wicker basket carried atop a girl’s head. She asks for rupees in exchange for the floating tribute to the payee’s god. The floating shrines are everywhere in the water, some still with a flame tugging against the light breeze.
Across the fiver is a bare bank with only a few river boats and some people congregated. As the sun lifts, the haze clears a little and I am tempted to think it is an island. In the whitened grey distance I think I see the outline of trees on another bank.
A large woman with her husband steps carefully into the Ganges. She looks back at her husband. She is elated and I wonder if she is from some other part of India, delighted to be -finally- bathing in the Ganges. Her smile is like a child too young to be embarrassed with the exuberance of the emotion behind it. It is a mark of the Indian people- they feel no embarrassment for their emotion, smiling and scolding with honesty.
The whole city of buildings is crowded on only one side of the Ganges. And slowly I walk back to the hotel, only to find Sophie still asleep. I ascend the stairs to the rooftop restaurant, and finally feeling the high breeze, I see that I am in one of the highest points of all Varanasi. It is Sunday morning and the sky above Varanasi is filled with kites. Twitching and gliding above the city, hundreds, if not thousands of tissue diamonds fluttered - simple squares turned askance and fixed to a cross of wood, each one a different color, each one a different design.
One boy, on a rooftop near and below mine stood casually watching his kite and with quick tugs and pulls at the sagging string he rose the colored square higher into the sky.
For the next week I had breakfast on the rooftop to the sound of a light wind and the flutter of tissue paper soaring through the hazy blue sky.
We walked along the Ghats and came across a human knee, femur, fibula and tibia, the bones all cracked and charred with some of the flesh still caked and caramelized to the bone. We walked farther and came across large piles of wood and beyond them flames churned into the sky from several points on the ash covered Ghats. We stood hypnotized by the bright movement. A boy standing next to me, dressed in rip-off designer jeans, and a matching shirt with a silver cross dangling from his neck turned to us and asked us the usual questions. Where we were from. He looked at Sophie and told her she was far too white. She feigned offense and he addendumed the comment by saying that she was 'cool'. Before the cremations he offered us the opportunity to buy hashish, opium, ecstasy and every other imaginable substance. We walked to a different point of view. A man dressed in simple white clothes approached me and asked me if I knew what was going on. I had read of these charity workers and I knew he was looking for an outrageous donation. I told him I did know what was going on. He asked 'how?'. I told him I'd read about it in a book. He said I could not learn everything from a book and that he could tell me the real details of what I was looking at. I told him that I was not interested in his offer. He continued on with his salesman pitch and as I walked away he yelled "You come to a Holy City and you don't learn about Karma?". There seemed to be spite in his voice.
The day Sophie and I took a boat ride in the Ganges, I dipped a small empty bottle into the river so that I could bring it back home with me and add to my collection of water. That night I got violently sick. When I had recovered several days later, Sophie and I went for a walk along the Ghats. I dipped my toe in the water next to a man who was bathing. That night I got violently sick. The two instances are just coincidences, I'm sure, but the truth is that the Ganges is incredibly polluted to the point where one could say it is poisonous. Not only does every variety of excrement find its way into the river, and burned bodies dumped into its water, but upstream factories unload incredible amounts of heavy metals and toxins into the water making it contaminated in a plethora of ways. Then again if the air wafting through the Vatican was just as polluted, I'm sure it wouldn't stop believers from breathing in with delight and praising their god.
All in all, Varanasi was my favorite city. I already miss those mornings of drinking chai and watching the kites flutter above the city.
Waiting for Tigers
We made our way north up along the coast to Mumbai before turning inland for a long haul to Madhya Pradesh. After three days of travel by train, bus and taxi, we were finally in Tala, the access point to the Barharghvard National Park. Exhausted we collapsed and resolved to figure out our safari in the park later.
What we found out was that the most popular gate, Gate 1, was booked up for a week. It was popular for good reason: we were told that there was a 99% chance of seeing Tigers. The other gates only offered chances half of that. Reluctantly we agreed to wait a couple of days to see if any cancellations would open up a spot in Gate 1 and then if not, go take our chances with one of the other gates.
Tala is much as you would imagine an old frontier town might have been in the western United States. One road with not much there, this one, however, filled with Indians. Sophie and I had exhausted the towns possible amusements with one twenty minute walk up and down the strip. While waiting for tigers, we resolved our bored predicament by the same means than most people in Frontier towns probably passed the time: we got drunk.
We were awaken at 5:30 in the morning, completely unaware that our safari would be that morning. The air was cold and the sweater I had wasn’t enough, but I was on my way to see tigers, I didn’t care how cold it was. Like an idiot, I turned to Sophie and sang a song of one impromptu line: “It’s tiger time, in India!”. Mr. Rogers would have been proud of my melody and cadence, I’m sure.
Our open back safari jeep pulled up to a long line in front of Gate 1. From what I could see, all the jeeps in front of us were filled with Indian tourists. Sophie and I were the only westerners. After much waiting. And after Sophie had gone through several cycles of being amused and annoyed with my safari jingle, jeeps started to filter in through the gate. Our guide approached our jeep with a solemn expression. We weren’t going through Gate 1, I could tell. He told us that we weren’t going through Gate 1. I knew it. We drove off towards Gate 2 and I tried to cheer myself and Sophie up with my unstoppable jingle. I explained to Sophie that it was actually a secret mantra and that the tigers could hear me. I told her I knew that it sounded childish, but it was actually a highly sophisticated tiger call. Sophie, cold, with her hands hanging on the string of her hood, pulled down tight over her face, looked at me, she was not amused. Abruptly, our guide rapped his hand on the head of our driver as if he were beating a drum and trying to catch up with the rest of a band. He yelled in Hindi and our driver put the jeep in reverse for a moment or two. Our guide pointed down at the sand beside the road. Three huge ovate divots crowned a fourth diamond shape imprint, a tiger paw print. Our guide told us it was only a few hours old. Ever skeptical, my immediate notion upon seeing the print was that it was fake, it just looked too damn perfect. I pictured someone crouching down on the ground before we arrived, pressing a tiger paw print stamp into the sand, carefully and conscientiously. An animal couldn’t possibly leave such a mark. As the driver put the jeep back into gear and we sped off towards Gate 2, I wondered if my experience of tigers in India would be relegating to forever wondering if I’d seen a real paw print or just some damned scam to placate unlucky tourists. I sang my jingle to reassure my spirits. We arrived at Gate 2 ( it looked far less ‘official’ than Gate 1 which further depressed my already skeptical spirits. Surely tigers would be more drawn to dwell closer to more official looking infrastructure.). A large elephant with a wooden cockpit bound to its back and sawed off tusks stood near it, ravishing a tree of chlorophyll. A few jeeps (far less than Gate 1) were congregated and waiting to enter Gate 2 (waiting for what, we had no clue). Our guide, standing in the passenger seat was yelling a conversation in Hindi with one of the park rangers. After a few minutes, their language became hurried and almost frantic. Our guide seemed to have garnered the essential information first. He rapped the driver’s head frantically once again and turned around, grabbing the jeep’s crash bar and pointed behind us, yelling “Look!”. As Sophie and I turned around, the jeep shot into reverse and we grappled the edges for support. In reverse we hurried through the cold morning air, our eyes flitting back and forth across the visual geography. I saw it first. I pointed and Sophie saw it too.
From the dark brush on the park side of the road extended paws through the short space of air as they aimed a leap down from a small incline. In a moment another lept from the thicket and as we raced towards the crossing our guide excitedly directed our eyes into the brush rushing past us on the right. Another tiger sauntering in the same direction as we peered out at us, looking for an agreeable opening to pass through.
In one sense, they were just big cats, and ultimately all they did was cross the street and look at us occasionally while they did so.
And still, there was majesty. The powerful supple movements of their flesh and bone - the way the fur turned and shimmered around calculating muscles that pushed and carried the contours of their bodies, the calm full circles in their eyes. The black stripes like black gashes into a pretense sight arming intent behind the fur against alert and awareness of preyed animals. Faces of lithe expression, untroubled and relaxed as they strolled in their slow morning walk.
Their movements were gone as quick as they’d come, filtering into the adjoining brush at the road’s twin edges. What a wondrous flight of moments.
Later in the day, Sophie and I learned that the jeeps that had gone through Gate 1 had seen no tigers. We were the only ones to see the cats.
What we found out was that the most popular gate, Gate 1, was booked up for a week. It was popular for good reason: we were told that there was a 99% chance of seeing Tigers. The other gates only offered chances half of that. Reluctantly we agreed to wait a couple of days to see if any cancellations would open up a spot in Gate 1 and then if not, go take our chances with one of the other gates.
Tala is much as you would imagine an old frontier town might have been in the western United States. One road with not much there, this one, however, filled with Indians. Sophie and I had exhausted the towns possible amusements with one twenty minute walk up and down the strip. While waiting for tigers, we resolved our bored predicament by the same means than most people in Frontier towns probably passed the time: we got drunk.
We were awaken at 5:30 in the morning, completely unaware that our safari would be that morning. The air was cold and the sweater I had wasn’t enough, but I was on my way to see tigers, I didn’t care how cold it was. Like an idiot, I turned to Sophie and sang a song of one impromptu line: “It’s tiger time, in India!”. Mr. Rogers would have been proud of my melody and cadence, I’m sure.
Our open back safari jeep pulled up to a long line in front of Gate 1. From what I could see, all the jeeps in front of us were filled with Indian tourists. Sophie and I were the only westerners. After much waiting. And after Sophie had gone through several cycles of being amused and annoyed with my safari jingle, jeeps started to filter in through the gate. Our guide approached our jeep with a solemn expression. We weren’t going through Gate 1, I could tell. He told us that we weren’t going through Gate 1. I knew it. We drove off towards Gate 2 and I tried to cheer myself and Sophie up with my unstoppable jingle. I explained to Sophie that it was actually a secret mantra and that the tigers could hear me. I told her I knew that it sounded childish, but it was actually a highly sophisticated tiger call. Sophie, cold, with her hands hanging on the string of her hood, pulled down tight over her face, looked at me, she was not amused. Abruptly, our guide rapped his hand on the head of our driver as if he were beating a drum and trying to catch up with the rest of a band. He yelled in Hindi and our driver put the jeep in reverse for a moment or two. Our guide pointed down at the sand beside the road. Three huge ovate divots crowned a fourth diamond shape imprint, a tiger paw print. Our guide told us it was only a few hours old. Ever skeptical, my immediate notion upon seeing the print was that it was fake, it just looked too damn perfect. I pictured someone crouching down on the ground before we arrived, pressing a tiger paw print stamp into the sand, carefully and conscientiously. An animal couldn’t possibly leave such a mark. As the driver put the jeep back into gear and we sped off towards Gate 2, I wondered if my experience of tigers in India would be relegating to forever wondering if I’d seen a real paw print or just some damned scam to placate unlucky tourists. I sang my jingle to reassure my spirits. We arrived at Gate 2 ( it looked far less ‘official’ than Gate 1 which further depressed my already skeptical spirits. Surely tigers would be more drawn to dwell closer to more official looking infrastructure.). A large elephant with a wooden cockpit bound to its back and sawed off tusks stood near it, ravishing a tree of chlorophyll. A few jeeps (far less than Gate 1) were congregated and waiting to enter Gate 2 (waiting for what, we had no clue). Our guide, standing in the passenger seat was yelling a conversation in Hindi with one of the park rangers. After a few minutes, their language became hurried and almost frantic. Our guide seemed to have garnered the essential information first. He rapped the driver’s head frantically once again and turned around, grabbing the jeep’s crash bar and pointed behind us, yelling “Look!”. As Sophie and I turned around, the jeep shot into reverse and we grappled the edges for support. In reverse we hurried through the cold morning air, our eyes flitting back and forth across the visual geography. I saw it first. I pointed and Sophie saw it too.
From the dark brush on the park side of the road extended paws through the short space of air as they aimed a leap down from a small incline. In a moment another lept from the thicket and as we raced towards the crossing our guide excitedly directed our eyes into the brush rushing past us on the right. Another tiger sauntering in the same direction as we peered out at us, looking for an agreeable opening to pass through.
In one sense, they were just big cats, and ultimately all they did was cross the street and look at us occasionally while they did so.
And still, there was majesty. The powerful supple movements of their flesh and bone - the way the fur turned and shimmered around calculating muscles that pushed and carried the contours of their bodies, the calm full circles in their eyes. The black stripes like black gashes into a pretense sight arming intent behind the fur against alert and awareness of preyed animals. Faces of lithe expression, untroubled and relaxed as they strolled in their slow morning walk.
Their movements were gone as quick as they’d come, filtering into the adjoining brush at the road’s twin edges. What a wondrous flight of moments.
Later in the day, Sophie and I learned that the jeeps that had gone through Gate 1 had seen no tigers. We were the only ones to see the cats.
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