Early note -- Yes, it's taken me a bit to get to this. My initial intention was to do daily updates here. I understood Web was much less common in India. Nay nay nay. Much much less common. I'm staying with friends Subodh and wife Sunita and their friend who owns a nice hotel, Surya, allowed me to use an office for this purpose. I have many photos and stories after only three days of a one month trip. I can give a quick sample of these photos now and will do more later. First, some early impressions, very early impressions from my first day in the wonderful country.
Day 1 – Varanasi – 31 Dec.
We sit in the lawn under a yellow umbrella with pink and green flowers, surrounded by gardens and the hosts’ young girls in gowns running in circles singing and dancing, showing off for us. We are driven through impossibly pressed streets – bicycles, pedestrians, motorcycles, cows, scooters, buses, goats, rickshaws and dogs – then us in a small Suzuki passenger car with sideviews pinned back for precious space in a cacophony of horns and calamity of crisscrossing goers everywhere. It’s tucked tight and harried in a small city with many-many people. But, as seems to be the case with most Indian things, everyone finds their place. Somehow, maybe by divinity, there is a place for everyone. Banaras Hindu University is miles long because the story goes the man who would take the land donation was told to walk as far as he could and make it back by sundown and that would be the campus. The Fine Arts Faculty is a mostly private collection held by the university. Most normal people – particularly Westerners like me – cannot see this: 2800 B.C. copper war tools, stone carvings, edifices from ancient buildings 1,700 years old stand in no case and without glass giving the stalwart aroma of humanity, of things done well for the right reasons. Carved pearl daggers with inlaid stones rimmed with gold and a room of Alice Boner, from Switzerland, who came to India in 1926 to be inspired by all the people, the simple ones with extraordinary lives, the dancers with waving palms up, the singers with long lifting voices. She sculpted and painted and it sits here for us somehow. My palms sweat. I want to sing and cry and laugh and scream all at once. We go to the oldest temple in the oldest living city. The holiest of places made for all people for all gods and all believers. We stand in the busy street in the sunshine and have tea in clay cups. We go to the Faculty of Fine Arts and sit bare-footed in a small room and listen to traditional drums coupled with the sitar players, the passionate and peaceful disciples of Rati Shankar. We have lunch in a grassy courtyard of Milan Royal Retreat, eat all the traditional Indian foods. Rubi’s husband Anook is the great grandson of the modern founder of Hindu, a man who wrote and painted and danced and traveled before travel and died at 35 in 1885. I don’t want to hear anymore of this place and it’s starvation and its filth. The people who talk of these things are blind to strength and determination. India to me seems like a collective grace in all life’s aspects.
Since this day I've floated the Ganges River, took tea with new friends on the sandy beach, toured the ghats where many thousands from all over come to pray and bathe away their sins, had traditional Indian meals at fantastic restaurants, had a late-late "31 Dec. Celebration", visited the Sarnath temple where Buddha went first after finding enlightment to teach his five wandering students, toured a massive Hindi language newspaper that has 2 a.m. daily deadline and sends two million papers to readers' doorsteps by 5 a.m. ---- uh, whew --- and shortly ago finished coffee and conversation with the Singhs, hotel owners, on the matters of spirituality (no need to speak of religion, there is a differene) and how to reach the place you seek. Now I'm beckoned for dinner. Much more later ---- Happy New Year!
Day 1 – Varanasi – 31 Dec.
We sit in the lawn under a yellow umbrella with pink and green flowers, surrounded by gardens and the hosts’ young girls in gowns running in circles singing and dancing, showing off for us. We are driven through impossibly pressed streets – bicycles, pedestrians, motorcycles, cows, scooters, buses, goats, rickshaws and dogs – then us in a small Suzuki passenger car with sideviews pinned back for precious space in a cacophony of horns and calamity of crisscrossing goers everywhere. It’s tucked tight and harried in a small city with many-many people. But, as seems to be the case with most Indian things, everyone finds their place. Somehow, maybe by divinity, there is a place for everyone. Banaras Hindu University is miles long because the story goes the man who would take the land donation was told to walk as far as he could and make it back by sundown and that would be the campus. The Fine Arts Faculty is a mostly private collection held by the university. Most normal people – particularly Westerners like me – cannot see this: 2800 B.C. copper war tools, stone carvings, edifices from ancient buildings 1,700 years old stand in no case and without glass giving the stalwart aroma of humanity, of things done well for the right reasons. Carved pearl daggers with inlaid stones rimmed with gold and a room of Alice Boner, from Switzerland, who came to India in 1926 to be inspired by all the people, the simple ones with extraordinary lives, the dancers with waving palms up, the singers with long lifting voices. She sculpted and painted and it sits here for us somehow. My palms sweat. I want to sing and cry and laugh and scream all at once. We go to the oldest temple in the oldest living city. The holiest of places made for all people for all gods and all believers. We stand in the busy street in the sunshine and have tea in clay cups. We go to the Faculty of Fine Arts and sit bare-footed in a small room and listen to traditional drums coupled with the sitar players, the passionate and peaceful disciples of Rati Shankar. We have lunch in a grassy courtyard of Milan Royal Retreat, eat all the traditional Indian foods. Rubi’s husband Anook is the great grandson of the modern founder of Hindu, a man who wrote and painted and danced and traveled before travel and died at 35 in 1885. I don’t want to hear anymore of this place and it’s starvation and its filth. The people who talk of these things are blind to strength and determination. India to me seems like a collective grace in all life’s aspects.
Since this day I've floated the Ganges River, took tea with new friends on the sandy beach, toured the ghats where many thousands from all over come to pray and bathe away their sins, had traditional Indian meals at fantastic restaurants, had a late-late "31 Dec. Celebration", visited the Sarnath temple where Buddha went first after finding enlightment to teach his five wandering students, toured a massive Hindi language newspaper that has 2 a.m. daily deadline and sends two million papers to readers' doorsteps by 5 a.m. ---- uh, whew --- and shortly ago finished coffee and conversation with the Singhs, hotel owners, on the matters of spirituality (no need to speak of religion, there is a differene) and how to reach the place you seek. Now I'm beckoned for dinner. Much more later ---- Happy New Year!
1 comment:
I was getting worried you weren't going to share your fantastic adventure with the rest of us. Sounds amazing! I look forward to reading more. Happy New Year to you brother!
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