| Where cows are treated like people, and people are treated like cattle |
[Jun. 19th, 2008|07:34 pm]
Scott
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The Indians claim Varanasi (Benares to the British) is the oldest city in the world, and a lot of archaeologists agree with them. Mark Twain, who visited in the 19th century, said that "Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and it looks twice as old as all of them put together."
He did not mention, but I will add, that it looks like no one's taken the trash out since the day it was founded.
Yes, Benares is the city of filth. Metaphorically, in the sense of the guy sitting next to me at this Internet cafe completely un-self-consciously watching hardcore porn, but mostly literally.
Trying to go outside in Benares is a harrowing experience. You're immediately flung into a current that does not let go. The sidewalks and the sides of the street are all covered with illegally parked bicycles, stalls, people begging, people meditating, huge mats of insects, and garbage, so everyone is sort of crammed into a single living river in the middle of the street.
Dave Barry said that the motto of Miami drivers was "Death before yielding", and that describes drivers in Benares too. Despite the fact that they're cutting through a wall-to-wall mass of people, they go at speeds that would be more appropriate to an autobahn. If you don't get out of the way, you get run over. Motorcyclists, who have more to fear from accidents, are slightly more considerate - they constantly keep their hands on the horn so that everyone knows a motorcycle is coming. Some of them have even rigged their cycles so that as soon as the cycle starts moving, the horn comes on.
Below the cars and cycles in the pecking order are the rickshaws, and horse-carriages. These are forced to plow their way through unwilling pedestrians. I got hit twice by rickshaws today, but usually they're at the side of me, telling me I should pay them to take me wherever I'm going. If I say no, they make up shameless lies, like that it's illegal to go by foot to my destination. If I still say no, they call me names, or accuse me of getting angry, or just plain keep following me in the hopes I'll change my mind. On my way to this Internet cafe, a rickshaw driver followed me for about twenty minutes of walking, all the while saying "You want rickshaw ride?". A half hour ago I looked out the window and he was still there, waiting for me to get out. It's dark now and I really hope he's gone away.
Below the rickshaws in the pecking order are the non-cow animals. The cows, which are holy to Hinduism and which I forgot to mention, are pretty much allowed to go wherever they want. If they want to lie down in the middle of the road, traffic goes around them. Sometimes whole herds of cows will wander down the street, mooing and pooping, and everyone will just stand by until they're gone. But the non-cow animals, like the dogs and goats and monkeys, just have to blend in the with the traffic and hope they're quick enough to avoid death. The smarter monkeys swing from road sign to road sign, peeing on the people below.
At the bottom of the pecking order are humans. Varanasi has something like three million people, all pressed into shanties linked by tiny alleys, and they're all going somewhere. The street is full of them, spitting and yelling and pushing you out of the way. When they need to go to the bathroom, they crouch down and go in the middle of the street. If they need to vomit (and in Benares, that's never far from your mind) they do that in the middle of the street too. And when they're not doing either of those, they're mostly harassing, begging, or trying to scam tourists.
Along with the hordes of living, there are probably even more dead people. Benares is the funeral capital of India, if not the world. According to Hindu legend, anyone whose body is burnt in Benares gets good karma, and anyone who dies in Benares immediately achieves moksha, liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth. Aside from these incentives, once you've been in Benares a while, dying just starts looking like a plain good idea. So dead people from all over India are carted into the city, and dying people sometimes try to make it as well before they kick the bucket. Once the bodies arrive on the River Ganges, they're burnt in a massive system of crematoria. Walking in parts of the city, especially around Hanumacharmani Ghat, looks like a scene out of Hell. All you see are bodies burning, everywhere.
(an aside - I was on a tour, being shown one of these crematoria, which was full of bodies burning and bodies wating to be burnt. A old, mostly naked, kinda decrepit homeless guy had decided to sleep next to the body pile, and while we were watching, he got up and wandered away. And I was like OHMYGOD, THAT ONE JUST CAME BACK!)
The bodies, of course, add a lovely extra little bit to the general fragrance of the city. They also don't help the poor Ganges River, which is the eventual end point for whatever filth makes it out of the city streets. According to my guidebook, the FDA standard for water that's safe for humans to wash with (not drink, WASH WITH) is less than 500 faecal bacteria per cubic something I forget. The Ganges near Benares has 1.5 million per cubic something. Oh, and the most sacred Hindu ritual is to go to Benares and immerse yourself in the waters of the Ganges. I wonder whether this has anything to do with the legend that dying in Benares gives you good karma. Anyway, the Ganges is full of bathing people, all of whom I assume will be filling the crematoria in a few days.
But humans are something that Benares has more than enough of. One thing I'm learning is that Asia values human life a whole lot less than I do. You can see it in the way many of the Benarians treat people. Mostly they either completely sacrifice their dignity to fawn on them in the hopes of getting money (one person promised to "treat me like a god" if I would use his rickshaw) or else run them over because they're in the way.
Benares is the holiest city of the Hindu religion. This seems sort of ironic based on how awful it is, but from what I've been gathering, the awfulness is in some sense linked to the holiness. Hinduism is kind of big on dirt and death. Priests of Shiva are supposed to train themselves by living in cremation grounds with carrion-eaters, so they learn to understand that death and decay are fundamental parts of the Universe.
One of my first introductions to Hinduism was through one of those educational comic books they make for young kids. This book was presenting the Gita, specifically the scene I've already mentioned where the god Krishna is undercover as a human, instructing Arjuna. Arjuna innocently asks him "What is real?" and then Krishna shows Arjuna his true form, which is beyond the capacity of humans to perceive or describe and which pretty much knocks Arjuna senseless. The way the comic book represented this was to have Arjuna's question, "What is real?" at the end of one page, and then, when you turned the page, there was completely unexpectedly an full two-page spread image of a huge horrifying monster full of lots of eyes looking like it was attacking out of the page, with the small caption "THIS is real."
I'm getting the feeling that Benares is kind of like that. What's real? Filth, death, decay, unbelievable human suffering. THAT is real. Take away all the stuff we as rich people got handed without really earning it - our nice houses, brown-skinned janitors, flush toilets, vacuum cleaners, governments with pollution control efforts, decent jobs, computers where we don't have to listen to a guy watching porn next to us - and what you're left with is Benares. Which makes it what's, way down at the bottom near the foundations, real. I don't know if I agree with that, but I get the message it's what Benares is trying to tell people.
And I get to stay here for a whole week, because I've got to wait for my new credit card to arrive. Oh joy.
I'm going to try to leave now. If the rickshaw driver whom I told to STOP FOLLOWING ME is out there, waiting for two hours for me to get off the computer, I'm either going to yell at him or break down and hire him to take me back to the hotel, I haven't decided which. |
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