Four Wonderful Days

It didn't start so well. Last Friday, after I came home from Hindi class I didn't feel good and then about 4, my fever rose suddenly and I had chills. I took aspirin which calmed things down and three hours later the fever went away. The same thing had happened 10 days earlier so I was worried. Saturday morning, I was on my way to a hospital in South Varanasi to have tests run but my Hindi professor convinced me to go to a local hospital which was much cheaper. It was cheap. It cost 20 cents for the entire visit, and the doctor cured my cough and cold which has been lingering for ever. However, I don't think he understood about the fevers. His English wasn't great. Also the visit was chaotic. The room was packed with other patients, each with a slip of paper like mine which they were thrusting at the doctor as he examined me. And there was a previous patient who was deaf and didn't understand that his visit was over so various people kept shouting at him that he should go. Anyway, later, after talking to several people I decided to go Monday morning to the hospital I had originally wanted to go to. And as I wasn't feeling well, I canceled my future Hindi lessons.

I had met this French woman named Pauline and she seemed to be having a great time in Varanasi so now that I had free time I decided to "hire" her as a tour guide. So we met on Sunday at 10 in the morning. She started to introduce me to her guide but I couldn't see him and then I realized that she was talking about the small, 7-year boy who was standing there. His name was Sidarath and he turned out to be a very good guide. First he took us to the Nepali temple which I hadn't seen and which is very nice. Then Pauline had seem some young men working out and wanted to go back there. We ended up in a different place. It was a small enclosed open-air area above the ghats, with a small soft earth room at the far end. The young men welcomed us and wanted Pauline to take their picture. She wouldn't but they insisted so I finally got out my camera and started taking pictures. I felt strange because they were naked except for very small loin cloths, but they were very happy to see themselves in my digital camera and have been pestering me ever since for prints so I am having prints made which will be ready tomorrow.

Monday, Pauline took a boat with me down to Asi Ghat from where I would take a bicycle rickshaw to the Hospital. Sidarath was with us but we both felt uncomfortable about taking him with us without his father's knowledge. As he was getting off the boat, the boatman started teasing him and then twisted his arm. We stopped him, but Sidarath was crying. He had said earlier that the boatman was a bad man who hit him, but we had already hired the boat. So we got off the boat and comforted him and told the boatman not to tease our friend. Sidarath stayed behind and we started up the river to Asi Ghat. Soon we noticed on the ghats along the river, running his heart out to keep up with us. We stopped the boat, and he came aboard. When we got to Asi Ghat, I showed Pauline one of my favorite book shops and I bought a couple more books. Then I headed for my hospital and Pauline and Sidarath went back to Main Ghat where we started.

I had my tests and then went to the restaurant where Pauline and I had lunch and she was there. I asked her if she had thought of doing anything about Sidarath who is a very intelligent, self-reliant, ethical and sweet young man beneath his street bravado. She said he had talked to his father who could afford to send Sidarath to school. The father works at the Golden Temple helping pilgrims do their pujas. They pay him what they want. Sometimes he makes quite a bit of money and sometimes he doesn't. Basically he is quite poor, his brother having cheated him out of his share of the inheritance from their father. She had already talked to the principal of the school and for 3,000 rupees (about 75 U.S. dollars) Sidarath could go to school until the end of the year. I have talked to the father and have been to the school with Pauline twice and we think everything is o.k. so today we went with Sidarath and the father to the school, gave the money to the father who gave it to the principal, and tomorrow Sidarath starts school. His father has been teaching him and he is very smart, but the school will also give him one-on-one tutoring to help him catch up. He has been to the tailor and been measured for his uniform. Tomorrow, Pauline and I are going to walk him to school for the first time and then we leave Varanasi. It is a strange feeling to have taken a young boy under our joint wing. I have no idea how it will turn out, but we can keep in school for 3,000 rupees a year (there is no proration for a half a year) so we will as long as he is willing to go. We are both going to try to come back to Varanasi next winter and check up on him.

The first day we went to his school together, it was Saraswati's festival day. Saraswati is the goddess of the mind, learning, books and education so no business was being done. The next thing I know, Sidarath and his father have walked us to this narrow lane and we are buying puja items, putting all our pens, cell phones, cameras, water, and I don't know what else into a locker and leaving our bags with the puja item seller and then we were being patted down by a series of policemen and then we were inside the Golden Temple where most foreigners don't get to go, Sidarath guiding us around. He was a very knoweldgeable, helpful, but insistent guide and he tried to keep us to a Hindu pace, concentrating on the various puja points in front of the shrines. Pauline and I kept trying to look around us and he kept saying, "Come." We threw our milk mixed with Ganga water and our flowers on the central lingam, the embelm of Shiva, then they put some of the flowers, sopping with milk and water back on our necks, took our puja items, touched them to the lingam and said prayers over them and gave them back. The area around the lingam was very crowded and we kept being jostled because we were so slow and ignorant and Sidarath kept saying "come," and Pauline kept looking at me with a puzzled look and I kept saying, "I have no idea what's going on." The priest smeared sandalwood paste on our foreheads as well as come colored powder, and then Sidarath gave us a tug and led us down very confusing aisles and we then we were in front of another shrine. I can't remember the order but we did puja in front of the Sun God (where we had colored string tied around our wrist), the Well of Knoweldge and Nandi, Shiva's bull. We also did some sort of reverence to the mother god. At the last shrine, either Nandi or the Well of Knowledge, the brahmin asked us if we wanted a small 200 rupee puja, a big 500 rupee puja, or the whole works for 700 rupees. We settled for the small puja and he asked us our names, our parents names, whether they were alive or dead and the names of our brothers and sisters. Then he made us put our heads on the shrine and we had to repeat a lot of Sanskrit. Pauline got the giggles in the middle of it, but I managed to keep a straight face. It wasn't that we didn't take it seriously but trying to keep up with his Sanskrit made us laugh. We got more dots on our head, then we looked at the mosque that was built on the site of the original temple, and then we were out on the streets again collecting our stuff with a bag full of blessed puja items. Sidarath's father met us and told us we could not throw the flowers away but we could feed them to a cow or throw them in the Ganga. Now they were beautiful and we should wear them for a while, something I felt uncomfortable about. He left us and Sidarath was leading us back to our hotel when I cow suddenly appeared and started eating the marigolds from around my neck. I quickly took them off and fed the lot to her. Pauline didn't have marigolds, only red flowers which the cow wouldn't eat. I had some of the red flowers too, and I said I was going to throw them in the Ganga before going to the hotel. So when we got to the ghats, and Sidarath and said good by, we went down to the Ganga and threw our flowers in and they floated away.

It was now dark and as we passed the burning ghats, Pauline asked me if I wanted to stop and look. She had asked me earlier if I had spent time there and I said, "No, I felt shy, but that I also felt drawn there." She had been going for half an hour a day and meditating. So we stopped and stayed there for over half an hour. I went back and forth between thinking about the people burning and what their lives might have been like, watching the scene from an aesthetic point of view -- it was beautiful at night, and being amazed at the technical skill of the cremation workers as the handled the fires ensuring that the bodies were well burnt. I was also aware that I was a tourist among other tourists and what a powerful moment this was in each of our travels. I have talked to travelers who have avoided it completely, but for many it is one of the major factors that make Varanasi such a compelling place.

What else. I went to Sarnath with a Dutch friend. When I first went 9 years ago, I didn't like the place very much. The excavations made no sense, the stupa looked ugly to me, and I didn't have enough time in the museum which is small and wonderful. This time, the excavations still made no sense, but the red bricks and the patterns the ruins made were beautiful. The park they are in is green, spacious and quiet, a relief from most of the rest of India, including Varanasi. The main stupa still looks ugly to me, but now it is a very attractive ugliness and the detailing of the remaining carvings is wonderful. And this time I had time to enjoy the museum.

Today I got the results of the tests and nothing seems to be wrong with me. I will have to wait and see if the fevers persist. If they do I will have it checked out in Los Angeles, but will try to avoid doctors for the rest of the trip.

I know I have left things out, a wonderful lunch on a rooftop overlooking a silk workshop, a trip to Ramanagar Fort and Palace, the placing of the Saraswati images in the Ganges, and on and on.

I am having a very good time. I am sad to leave Varanasi and looking forward to Delhi.

Luke