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The kite festival is not without adorable casualties…

We managed to arrive in Varanasi in time for Christmas along with a bone chilling mist that has lingered until today, but the wind remains, and this is lucky, for its the first day of the Kite Festival. The stellated mandala of roof plaster is flanked by blue again, instead of endless misty nothing (good for shamatha, bad for vitamin d), and there are 600 kites of every color making small private circles in any of the ten directions one may gaze upon.

Around dusk….there is a tangible electricity sparkling thought the crimson. Every child is a little Benji Franklin. I watch an intrepid family construct a hot air balloon from a large plastic trash bag and a can of kerosone. They light that shit, inflate the bat and send it off into the firmament…it makes it to the desert across the ganga before disintegrating. Oh the humanity!

Gabe and I set out camerawise to document the event, and we walk north along the ghats, trying in vain to fit all of Shiva’s arms into a 16:9 frame. The kites offer a little hole in the single track of commerce, and even the boat touts are more interested in cutting lines than finding westerners for commission. The dance of the kites is a subtle mudra: two fists: one below the heart, one raised to the air, back and forth rhythmically, looking up in concentration, stepping forward once, then back, foot over foot, hand over hand, attached to the invisible cord. Through imitation of this dance, begging children can be easily be convinced that you have a kite, and with this conviction, its easy to get them to chase you. My record today was about 10 kids running behind me for at least 2 lingams, an easy unit of measure on the ghats. Any activity that breaks the pattern of economy in is welcome for everyone involved.

“You need something…” hissed in the ear while passing.

“Yes, Heloooo. Boat. boat. Yes. 1 hour. Coming.” shouted from the banks.

“1 rupee 1 rupee” or “1 cookie one cookie” common among young hustlers.

“Yes helo what country.” Means they know of a silk shop that will give them commission.
Ganja is illegal, but bhang lassi is readily at government shops. Filthy white tile with glass bottles of mysterious green froth. On the wall, an image of Shiva, relaxing in the Ganga, winking and sipping from said bottle.  Bottoms up!

Did you know there are large cows andwater buffalo everywhere, even the winding alleys of Bengali Tola, the old city, where the long termers languish in guesthouses, smoking at cafes and studying classical music. The cows are harsh beggars, and make their rounds nightly, sticking their heads through restaurant curtain and iron grate for alms, just mooing and licking. They are often milked, and one can see sadhu milkmen carrying white froth in aluminum pails to one heinous smelling alley where the milk is collected in large vats with much yelling.

The dogs are considerably more subtle. Gabe and I give them biscuits…one for me, one for you, one for you, one for you, one for me…one for you one for you one for you, your nursing….hmmmm… Ithink I’ll eat that last cookie actually. Loosening mind leads to harsh snacking.

The humans….

Its like being in the matrix. Sometimes its depressing. Sometimes its fun. Its endless, and they are very pushy. They are keen to interrupt, cut one off, and generally don’t listen to no. One child simply wraps all limbs around my leg and wont let go. Some times I say “No thanks.” Sometimes I hiss or bark. A guttural “uuurrrrraaaaaghhh” works on all interlocuters.

Waylon and Gabe and I have endless discussion of the proper attitude to handle such behavior. Waylon maintains that a)its possible to carry yourself in such a way that no one bothers you with these propositions, and b) that its all a matter of attitude anyway and we might as well not let it bother us in the least bit. This attitude, in its best moments, makes one slippery but aware, open to interaction, but at no one’s mercy. I generally vacillate between an attitude of bustling delight, which leads me to play with everyone, including the touts in a sarcastic fashion, and a sense of encroachment, like I can’t modulate my attention at all. In this second state, if someone says. “Hello my friend, What country.” and I say “I don’t want to be sold anything right now!”. Gabe says this attitude is harsh and a useless waste of my energy reserves. That it won’t actually change anything. But it feels good, and its an honest reaction to the stitching of the spirit into commodity. To treat each situation as it arises, with freshness and spontaneity and honesty, even when this involves anger or smallness or grasping…I think there is some wisdom in this. At the very least, a confirmation of basic aliveness, receptivity. This has become part of a larger ongoing debate based around the general attitude of “No Preferences”, a cartoonish version of Buddhist equanimity that involves not caring what one eats, where one sleeps, what ones steps in, or the quality of ones interpersonal interactions. One taste, young jedis…Distasteful to me…necessary mind training, and yet the feeble application of this philosophy is colonial, according to my new Aussie friend Malcolm Grant. One of those delightful few who hates indian people but loves the architecture. “Its imperial! Oh its so amazing, what squalor! The world is so balanced! Mother Ganga! Fuck off, its filthy, everyone is sick and no one takes any responsibility for it. You can come here without learning a scrap of the language and live like a king in a filthy palace and then go home, so much the wiser for your worldly ways. And you’re no tourist your a traveler…what a crock…”

Then again, he’s chronic depressive. Too clever to be happy, I guess.

Ahhh…weary am I of this train of thought. Let’s switch tracks. The trains the trains….sleepers cars…Chai CHAI CHAIIIIIII at the stations, and chana, chilis and chick peas and lime, mixed deftly, spilling much on the floor for the orphans to sweep up with their little stick brooms for 1 rupee donations. 10 hour delay, Tashe Dele’s, collective bargaining tuk tuk drivers, stop for lunch, 6 rupee idly. After 4 months, I still have to convert from Hyrule rupees to local rupees. And oddly enough, there are in fact little rubies hiding about in bushes and chests. This city reads like an RPG.

And the buildings are straight out of Myst. A tower above theburning ghats. Its where the rich are taken. Dying in this city…a great achievement; living is learning and learning is burning, they say, for money. You have to know the stories. Ignore Half of what I say. Moksha, Moksha….here death is intentional.  Pilgrims make their way here to die. They come here to die. Sometimes, they even die. You will die.

Untouchables stoke the fires of sandalwood, floating in from downriver on enourmous barges. There are various grades available for various grades of wealth. Only the finest. Upriver, another ghat, more dogs, and more aghori babas, naked in ashes with skull bowls, where those with slightly less jewel adornments, in linens of lesser weave are burned on smaller pyres of pressure treated wood. All those metals end up in thebody of mother ganga, so shanti that she accepts with love all the cursed refuse of this world, in exchange for nothing less than total liberation. There is 30,000 times the legal fecal coloform count, and 0% dissolved oxygen. No fish at allthis far downriver, but there are some dopey river dolphins, who are physically blind from the pollution. The heavy metals sink to the bottom and congeal with the raw sewage to form a thick silt, which hardens during the dry season, ast he waters recede, into a vast desert of lean tos, laundry lines, and kite runners, caked and naked, we practice stoned karate on the chunks of hardened silt, hone our gematria on the vaulted architecure of the left hand bank, and discover hints to past lives. Our voices change, slowly, sloftly, always. At the bathing ghats, we sing In the Aeroplane Over the Sea at the top of our lungs to a minyon of indian men. How strange it is to be anything at all…