India: Holy river, holy cow, holy traffic jam

Hindu techno thrust

Gyrating orange, red, gold

Turn me inside out

I stumbled into India on a hot and humid day in mid-July feeling a bit like an awkward newborn filly. Heavy with backpack I plodded with flip-flopped feet into myriad smells, tastes and textures as we crossed the border near Lumbini, Nepal, close to where Lord Buddha was born, into the wonderful clusterfuck of the Indian sub-continent. 

The smell of urine, feces, incense and curry immediately swept up into my nostrils as I dodged wandering cows, tuk-tuks, bicycles, feisty vendors and begging children and we passed stalls selling assorted breads, sweets, yoghurts, milk tea and overseas phone calls. 

I had crossed into the land of lovely women, staring men, intricate, shimmering sarees, infanticide for baby girls, arranged marriages, holy cows wandering the streets, unimaginable and yet somehow fluid traffic, poverty, wealth, social castes still alive and well, stunning monuments to love, war and religion and, most of all, the land where 16% of the world's population - over a billion people - all clamor on top of one another for air, water, food, and the chance to postpone, if just for one day, the eternal suffering that is life.  

The group that I had joined in Nepal followed our guide through the border crossing formalities and into India with wide, guarded eyes. "Well, here we go" we said amongst ourselves. 

Over the next two weeks we traveled via train, camel, jeep, taxi, local bus, and foot to Varanasi, holy city on the Ganges, and over to Agra, where the monument to love, the Taj Mahal, soars white against searing blue skies. We then headed to the back roads of Rajistan, a hot northern desert state bordering Pakistan, traditional and conservative in its rituals, beliefs and day-to-day happenings, and finally back to New Delhi. 

 

Our first stop in India was Varanasi. At almost 3,000 years old, it is claimed by some to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. Varanasi is believed by Hindus to have been founded by Lord Shiva almost 5,000 years ago on the banks of the holy Ganges river, the river of life and death, and is a holy place for Hindus as well as Buddhists and Jains. 

As we got closer and closer to Varanasi, we passed ever more dense groups of young male pilgrims, dressed in bright orange, barefoot and balancing their tell-tale sticks across their shoulders with water vials hanging from each end with which to collect the holy waters of the Ganges, thought to wash away sins.

On the second morning there, we woke at 4:30 to travel down to the river to see the sunrise. As we approached the banks of the river, we saw more and more of the pilgrims carrying their water vials towards the waters. 

According to the guide books, nearly 30 sewers empty into the river Ganges at the point in Varanasi, not to mention that the ashes of over 200 cremated bodies are sprinkled 100 meters upstream into the waters each day, and yet, as we made our way towards the already crowded banks at 5 a.m., we saw women and men in beautifully colored sarees bathing and splashing with fervor in the water along the banks. In fact, over 1,000,000 faithful pilgrims come each year to perform ablution, burn their loved one's bodies and float lighted candles for loved ones in the holy waters. 

In Hindu religion, the ultimate goal is to break the cycle of reincarnation because life is, essentially, suffering. Many pilgrims believe that by bathing this way in the holy waters, possessing vials of Ganges water, or, ultimately, by dying near the Ganges and then burning your body along the banks and putting your ashes in the river, you have a better chance of avoiding rebirth and releasing your soul from the cycle of transmigration.

 

While we were waiting for our rowboat to take off, a little boy struck up a conversation with us while trying to sell us his postcards. “Look!” He said excitedly, “my postcards have dead bodies on them too!”

 

He pointed to the color pictures of funeral pyres on the front of his postcards, and once again I was reminded how strange it must seem that we are surprised at their custom of burning bodies on the banks of the river and throwing the ashes in so that the soul can escape re-birth. 

In the west, we hold death an arm’s length away, denying its existence and trying to escape its corporeal realities until the last possible moment. 

As we walked back to our tuk-tuks from the banks of the river we dodged roaming cows, piles of human feces and burial processions carrying gauze-covered, floppy bodies down to the banks for cremation on the funeral pyres. 

Although I tried to dodge them all, one of the bodies bumped against my shoulder as I tried to dodge a cow, feces and dead body at the same time. The gauze brushed lightly against my upper arm and I felt once again what it means to be in India, and how thin the line is between death and life. 

After leaving Varanasi, we caught an overnight train to Agra, home of the 17^th century mausoleum, the Taj Mahal, and holy land of the crappy trinket hawker. 

Although the Taj Mahal was originally built as an Islamic monument, complete with passages from the Qur'an along the sides of the marble exterior, the day we visited was a Hindu holiday and one of the only days that visitors are allowed to enter the musky, airless burial chamber of Shah Jahan and his favorite wife, for whom the Taj was built after she died in childbirth while bearing their 14^th child.

The sheer enormity of the Taj was made even more impressive by the wide, searing, bright blue sky framing it on the day we visited. The monument took over 17 years to build and required over 20,000 artisans and slaves and 10,000 elephants to complete. As we waited in line to file through the underground burial chamber, we marveled at the beauty of the white marble against the blue, blue sky and the beautiful colored sarees of the local tourists. 

After sweating it out at the Taj, the next week took us through the back roads of Rajasthan, where traditionally dressed Rajput men in colourful turbans and with huge moustaches made their way along crowded, dusty streets via camel, horse, motorcycle, bicycle and tuk-tuk.

 

Rajasthan is known for its warriors, and we visited its walled cities and forts with wide eyes, imagining how life in this traditional Indian backwater has changed and yet has stayed the same. 

When we wandered, dripping with sweat, up to one particular castle atop a Rajistani hill, I came upon a relief on the wall of 31 small female hand prints. According to my audio guide, these were the handprints of the wives of Rajistani men who had been killed in battle. After their husbands' bodies had been brought back to the town, they placed their palm prints into this wall (although they do not greatly resemble true hand prints) and then each proceeded, unaided and willing, to climb quietly onto the funeral pyre with their husbands dead body and, praying all the way, practiced saintly self-immolation. 

From within the huge hilltop castles I peered out of the intricate, thick window screens the women in the sultans’ harems peered out of, unable to leave the castles to see the world because of purdah (a state in which wealthy women in India are unable to go outside in public in order to show their status in society).

As I gazed out the window at this alternate view of the world that could have been mine to some extent (had I been dealt the 99% chance of being born to a society in which women cannot or do not travel) I once again pondered the opportunities I have had in my life. In many cases, I believe that we make our own future, especially for individuals born into societies such as the U.S., Canada or Europe. In these societies, it is often too many options, rather than no options that hold back our youth, crippled by our own indecisiveness.

However, what kind of person would I have been if I had been born into a society in which people have fewer options? Would I have raged against my cultural restraints and traveled around the world anyway? Would I have even been able to get the visas to travel to many of the countries I have seen? This too is something we often take for granted – as it’s much harder for people from many countries to be granted even the most basic of travel visas.

Friends often like to point out that for someone who would under most circumstances consider herself a feminist, I certainly have chosen strange locales in which to visit and live – Ecuador, Japan, Cambodia, India, Nepal and even Turkey… none of these countries would be considered particularly progressive when it comes to women’s rights. 

And yet, what I have learned so much from visiting these places. The status and inequity experienced by women in these countries is quite often perpetuated not only by the men, but also by the women themselves, through the perpetuation of social customs and continuation of cultural habits through which they judge and punish one another. And, in the end, this has changed what feminism; or rather humanism means to me – with the end goal being to decrease judgment – that men and women both should be able to make their decisions and life choices from a place of bravery and love, and should not be shunned for making those decisions, whatever they may be. 

 

I was often reminded when I was in India, of the story of a friend from India, with whom I completed the CELTA (Cambridge English Language Teaching for Adults) in Auckland this January. If she’s reading this I hope she won’t be angry that I share her story… my fascination with it probably indicates more my own cultural naiveté than any actual difference between it and the stories of most women around the world.

 

One morning, just before class was to start, I was sitting in my usual seat in class sipping my coffee from the travel mug I carried around religiously (marking me as an American, as no one else in any country I’ve visited feels the need to tote around the coffee they refused to take the time to drink when they made it). Just as class was about to start, she came in looking extremely stressed out and on the verge of tears, as was her habit. She sat next to me and I asked, while suckling my plastic mug, if she was ok.

 

Her response was unexpected. “Oh, you cannot understand what I am going through, Jennie. This is my last chance.”

 

Stupidly, I responded, “Oh no, it will be ok, that can’t be true…”

 

The story she told me next surprised, humbled and angered me greatly. She used to be a teacher in India (in fact, with her double masters degrees and extensive teaching experience she was probably one of the most qualified people in our class, with the exception of our Italian lawyer). Upon reaching a certain age, her father, who wasn’t getting any younger, had decided that it was time for her to marry and after fighting it for a while, she finally acquiesced, seeing little reason not to go through with the custom of an arranged marriage, which often works out quite well.

 

Her father found a suitable man from the same social caste and they were married soon after. Unfortunately, the fellow had misrepresented himself and as time passed and passed and it became more and more obvious that the marriage would not be consummated, she became worried and asked whether perhaps they should seek some kind of professional help. Her husband answered that in fact he was gay and although she could do whatever she liked there was little chance of a future for them as typical man and wife, meaning that male progeny was basically impossible.

 

Devastated, she made what had to be one of the most difficult decisions of her life, and went against custom, society and culture to begin the process of divorcing the interloper.

 

From my western perspective, this was the most obvious choice and she was well within her rights to do so (me coming from a society that chooses divorce when one spouse no longer matches the tapestries in the living room).  In India, however, this was the ultimate disgrace, not just for the individual suffering through the divorce (especially the woman) but for the entire family.

 

My friend’s father was in poor health and the stress of the divorce put him over the top (or so my friend believed). He passed away shortly after the divorce was complete and as I gazed, wide-eyed into her anguished face she said to me, “and I killed him, it’s all my fault. Living here in Auckland with my sister is my last chance. This course is my last chance.”

 

At this point tears were welling up in my eyes and I had long since stopped suckling my plastic mug. “But, you…. You just can’t blame yourself! That’s not your fault!” I said, disbelievingly.

 

“You just cannot understand, Jennie.” She said. “This is my last chance.” With that, she turned away, agitated, and began preparing her neat, extensive notes for class. 

 

As I sat back, I realized, after a few moments of internal struggle, that I could not understand. In fact, I will never understand. As class began and I wiped away my tears, I began to understand better not the vastness of her pain, but the depth of my own inability to understand the whole world just by traveling within it.

And, as I stood looking through the heavy, beautiful, awful, ornate screens in the Rajistani palaces, I gave thanks to God, once again, for my life, for my choices and for my ability to control, to some extent, both.  

One of the most traditional locales we visited during our time in Rajasthan was Nimaj Baj, a small orchard town. One of our tour guides was descended from the local nobility and amidst muffled grumbles about “a conflict of interest” we settled into his family’s “summer estate” and paid inflated prices for curries, beers and jeep rides to visit local communities of startled shepherds quietly minding their own business and tending to their flocks.

 

The best part about staying in his family’s estate-come-guesthouse, however, was listening to stories his mother told about the state of local affairs. Before coming to India I had read a book called “May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons” by Elisabeth Bumiller – one I highly recommend for anyone traveling to India - and I was surprised to hear his mother complain about the cultural customs mentioned in the book, such as brides being set on fire by their husband’s family if enough dowry is not paid, “purdah” – the practice of keeping an upperclass wife in the house and not allowing her to leave nor uncover her face, infanticide and abortion of baby girls (boys are much more valued in Indian culture) and arranged marriages that more closely resemble indentured servitude in which the husband can easily choose second and third wives (although not legally binding) that were still common practice in her region.

Although Bouvon, her son, refused to walk through the town because of his erstwhile noble status, and instead followed closely behind our tour group in his car, we also had the amazing opportunity to walk through the town and stop by the local school as well as the hospital, where we got to meet the local student population and several day-old babies. The students in the school reminded me of the students in Cambodia, studious, eager, intelligent and hopeful. As we wandered through the schoolyard and out through the town towards the hospital they followed us, begging for just one more picture. 

After Nimaj Bagh we headed on through the Thar Desert bordering Pakistan to the town of Jodhpur, which is dominated by the Meherangarh Fort, run by the local Maharaja, which sits on top of a sheer rocky ridge in the middle of town. There we relaxed on the roof of our hotel and even woke up early to catch the lunar eclipse, stealing furtive glances amidst fears plunging into sudden blindness by staring too directly at the sun. 

 

We then continued on to Udaipur, the coolest and most pleasant city we had visited thus far, built near the shores of Lake Pichola, and completed our tour of Rajistani grandeur with a visit to an ornate lake palace.

 

As the last few days in Udaipur came to a close, we rested and did some last minute trinket shopping as we steadied ourselves for one last overnight train to Delhi. 

The reality of India as a country, spread thickly across vast chasms of caste, color, culture, and landscape was the most sensual and inspiring thing I have ever experienced. 

The graceful, complicated beauty of the men and women of India, their daily struggle, the force of their multitudes, the delicious smells, textures and tastes that interweave through their daily lives… from the man squatting down to take a dump on the sidewalk first thing in the morning to our noble-blooded tour guide ordering his servants to bring more chai; from the mother sleeping in the traffic median with her skin-and-bones children curled into little balls at her side to our tour guide’s kind, plump, lustrous mother offering up stories about bride burnings, purdah and her duties as a higher caste woman of wealth, as well as her own marriage at the age of 19 to our tour guide’s father, all of India seemed to be undulating with life and contradiction. 

And something, some part of me that had been sleeping; part fear, part anger, part desire, part hunger, woke up. 

And then, just as it was almost too much to bear, I performed my final act of privilege. I boarded a plane, took my seat and flew away.

Nepal: Mountain temples, monkeys and funeral pyres burning bright

Birth then Life then Death

The wonderful symmetry

Death then Life then Birth

In a small, whitewashed restaurant up the steps of a back alley entrance just on the edge of the tourist district in Katmandu, Nepal there is a local band of young men who make music twice a week on Sundays and Tuesdays. Using traditional flute, drums and stringed instruments they lilt their notes and rhythms together with a rock guitar, acoustic guitar and saxophone. In their young enthusiasm and splay-legged boyishness, they remind me of any band of musicians at home, meeting at the local coffee house or bar to bond with their buddies and hopefully inspire groupie behavior from the local female population.

 

They make their music freely, men joining in, men dropping out. They play western tunes, re-orchestrating on the spot to match the sounds that have played across their lives in temple ceremonies or weddings or funerals. It is a lilting sound, with the flute playing lightly across the top, then dropping down deeply as if across mountain tops and down steep passes.

 

As one of their last numbers, they break into a breathtaking version of Celine Dion’s “My heart will go on” from Titanic. It is at once the cheesiest choice of music and the most beautiful sound I’ve heard in months. My dinner companion, close by my side, leans her head forward and whispers in my ear “Imagine… these are men who’ll never see the ocean.”

 

I arrived in Katmandu on July 10^th after a relaxing week in the bustling, commercial metropolis of Bangkok. With hotel booked and airport transport paid for I headed through customs and passport control and headed down to baggage to collect all my earthly possessions and wander out into the world. While waiting at the baggage carousel, I struck up a conversation with a Japanese girl, Mio.

 

After our short conversation, we decided to head into town together (which turned out to be great since my hotel transport was no where to be found). This saved me both a lying taxi driver telling me my hotel was closed and taking me to another hotel to get their commission and also provided an amazing new friend and travel companion for the next 2 days.

 

It turns out that Mio had lived in Katmandu for 2 years working for an NGO, spoke Nepalese, and was just back for a weeklong visit to bring some funds over from Japan.

 

Over the next few days, she took me under her wing and introduced me to her host family, her painting instructor and her local friends. The first stop we made was to visit her host grandmother, whom she calls mother, a small white-haired lady in a thin sari who lived near the center of town and cried when Mio came back to see her. We sat with her in her kitchen and she made us milk tea and chatted with Mio in Nepalese and Newalese (a local language of her cast) and I smiled intermittently at appropriate intervals.

 

After that we headed up to her painting teachers house at the top of a small hill near the center of town and close to the monkey temple, which was virtually over-run with monkeys.

 

Her painting teacher paints Buddhist mandalas (spiritual paintings which are thought to contain a soul of their own). The painstaking nature of the intricate work means that each small painting can take up to a month to complete, with each stroke of the tiny brush bringing you only one hair closer to a completed mandala painting.

 

We sat with the man and his children and he caught up and chatted with Mio as well, with me smiling and nodding intermittently again, content to soak up the amazing good fortune I had had to be shepherded in the good graces of my new friend.

 

One of the little girls running around the painter’s shop had been a little girl Mio had taken under her wing years before. Her mother, left behind by her husband with two daughters (worth much less in Nepalese and Indian culture than boys), could not afford to feed both of them and decided to give one of the girls to Mio. She told her daughter that she would be back to pick her up, and then left her with NGO orphanage workers that Mio had contacted. In the end, the woman ended up taking the girl back because the aid workers were unable to control her behavior, and her mother married Mio’s painting teacher, which solved the problem.

 

The little girl held my hand sweetly as we ascended the steep stone steps to the monkey temple, but Mio told me that it had been years before she was able to trust western looking people because the aid workers her mother had left her with were white.

 

After two days of spending time with Mio’s grandmother and host mother, Bimala, who even helped us to buy material so we could make saris, going out for great live music (“My heart will go on”), seeing intricate mandalas in progress, and visiting temples, it was time for us to part ways. Amid promises to keep in touch and my many thanks I headed off with my tour group (with whom I’m completing the rest of Nepal and India) and Mio headed off for a visit to the school she supports.

 

Meeting and spending time with Mio helped me remember all the people who have been so kind and helpful along my journey – first in New Zealand and Australia, then in Cambodia. Once again, I was struck with my inability to return their kindness directly, and instead the need to “pay it forward.”

 

Once with the tour group, we headed to more beautiful Buddhist monasteries and temples in and around Kathmandu, stopping along the river to see the Hindus worshipping and cremating their family members by the water. As I stood across the river from them and tried my best to snap some inconspicuous shots of this most intimate ceremony, I was amazed at how in your face death and life can be. 

In the west, we try our best to sweep death under the rug, as if it is not a natural part of being born. According to our tour guide, in Nepal, Hindus believe that life is suffering (meaning that death is the alleviation of that suffering). By burning the bodies on the river’s edge and then putting them in the river, it is hoped that the cycle of life, death and re-birth can be broken so that the deceased will no longer suffer through another life. How different this view is from both the Buddhist belief in reaching enlightenment in this life, and also the our western attachment to this life… as well as Christianities ideas about heaven and hell…

I pondered these thoughts as we rode down through the mountains towards Royal Chitwan National Park and promises of elephant safaris, rhino sightings and even a tiger or two.

 

Chitwan was all it was cracked up to be, albeit with no tiger sightings, and also unbearably hot. Once again, I was sweating like it was my job.

 

One of the most interesting conversations I’ve had thus far was one I had in Chitwan with our guide, Gourav. We were chatting about what he was going to do after he dropped us off at the border of India to meet our next guide. He said that he was heading home to meet some girls his mom wanted him to marry. Apparently, at the ripe old age of 29 he was quite over the hill and his parents were getting sick so they’d decided it was time he married someone who could take care of them. His elder brothers had both married women who were more educated and did not want to move to their home away from Katmandu to take care of his parents. 

 

When we asked how he felt about this, he said it would be fine with him. He would be ok with marrying the girl, and then he would head back to Kathmandu (10 hours away) to lead westerners (and western women) on tours... and perhaps she could stay and take care of his parents. “Kind of like a maid?” I said. “Kind of.” He said, bobbling his head back and forth flirtatiously.

 

This was one if the many times I both thanked my lucky stars that I was born into the situation I was, especially as a woman, but also that I had to take a step back and realize how incredibly different western culture is from many other cultures. As we head into India – the next leg of the journey, I brace myself… and wait for the revelations to come.

 

Everyday I am amazed, humbled, questioned, and devastated. And yet, the cycle, although sometimes unpleasant, is unilaterally inspiring.