Photograph by Nana Chen

Two of the ghats are outdoor crematoriums where fires blaze continuously twenty-four hours a day. They give off a steady source of smoke and ash that curls out and mingles into the paler grey of the water. Some people cannot be burned according to religious code; infants, the physically disabled and others are dumped into the river, amid great ceremony, to join the bloated corpses of animals (mostly cows and dogs) that cannot be cremated either. Through this, you can catch the occasional Gangetic dolphin breaking the murky surface. Despite this macabre cornucopia, during parts of the day, and in certain lights, the Ganges does look beautiful.

On my last afternoon there, I sat down near an Agori Babu, a kind of holy man or sadhu. The dread-locked Agori Babus watch over the second, and less prestigious burning ghat, clad only in filth and ash and the occasional loincloth. They’re also known among the back-packer crowd for being perennially high and sometimes generous with their hash. He did not disappoint and offered up his chillum or hash pipe, to a Korean tourist and me. We took turns puffing away and making up a common sign language to say: “Varanasi, yes. Chillum, good.”

Despite the beauty of Varanasi — the candle rafts offered in prayer to the great mother-river, the proximity to life and death and the noisy, fiery, hypnotic rituals, gorgeous sunrises, and cheap accommodation — the city and I had what I believe will be our last acquaintance. This time, the city felt oppressively eerie. This time, I just wanted a bit of fun on a sandy beach in Goa.

I made a small donation to the Babu, as much for the hash as “for the wood” (cremations), and then hazily made my way back to the hotel, with thoughts of making peace with Jen-pei and heading for Goa. I found him at the hotel and we decided to have tea at a nearby shop.

Even though we’d shared the room, we hadn’t really talked during our time in the city. The time apart was enough for us to both relax and see each other through the expectations and disappointments that hung like clouds in the air between us. We spoke of plans in singular, future tenses that left no doubt that this was goodbye. As the light in the teahouse dimmed and yellow and green geckos emerged from the shadows to chase each other across the ceiling above our heads, we forgave each other and meant, for a moment, to keep in touch.

That night our room was filled with sounds of Hindu rituals and Muslim calls to prayer from the Golden Temple and the main Majid (Mosque) of Varanasi. The sound of monkeys playing with the window latch mingled with the rustlings of mice that lived as unwanted roommates in the alcove directly behind the bed. As we packed our things in preparation for the next day’s departure, we communicated as polite strangers. Finally, we lay down to sleep on far sides of the bed.

Trips are as much about places as they are about the people you meet along the way. There are people and places that we return to again and again until they become part of our life’s map. While to others we are no more than tourists: only visiting, imagining them as we would have them be.

Note: As part of a nation-wide wave of Hindu nationalism, many Colonial Era names have been changed since 2000. Dum Dum International Airport in Calcutta (now Kolkatta) was renamed Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport. Despite his frequent clashes with Gandhi and his brief alliance with Nazi Germany, Bose is a cherished national hero, especially in his native state of West Bengal. His death in a 1945 plane crash makes the renaming ironic in a way that is so often found in India. [Continue...]