Varanasi
Varanasi is the oldest living (Indian?) city- I think people have been living there for over 5000 yrs... my facts are always a little iffy- sorry.
This is my favorite place in India. Yes, I have had some amazing experiences and there are other places that i really enjoyed, but there was smthg about Varanasi that was very very different.
Hindus believe that if they die in Varanasi they will immediately achieve 'moksha' which could be translated into enlightenment- but actually means that that they will be freed from their body. Hindu religion believe in reincarnation, right, so they must keep returning to bodies until they achieve moksha, where they can then be freed to live in heaven for eternity, fully enlightened.
(Apparently, for a soul to reach the human level it has to go thru smthg like 8.4 million species).
People come to Varanasi for their children to be blessed, for marriages to be successful, for death. There are celebrations constantly going down the streets. These entail many different things, but they must absolutely have a trumpet, a drum and a group of men dancing like wackos with their hands in the air. I absolutely love the dancing, but women are not allowed to dance. i was told the other day that when Indians see women dance they think " Oh that is a baaad woman". ;)
The celebrations move down the street, men dancing, music blaring, tempo double speed super upbeat, with people carrying lamps on the heads and generators being pulled behind.
Varanasi winds around and around, where there would have been no way for me to find my way anywhere without our little guide Ravi. He just liked hanging out with us and we liked hanging with him so we did. he brought us shopping in the alleys, and showed us a couple of temples, but most importantly, he brought us to the burning ghat. This is the place that people are cremated.
Let me set it up for you.
1st of all, women are not allowed to be on the level of the river or the funeral pyres, bc often grieving widows would jump onto their dead husbands pyre- so this is just supposed to protect us. Ravi brought us up to the roof of a nearby ghat (temple) so we could see down onto the funeral pyres. So we are sitting up with the birds and monkeys.
Every once in a while there is a loud popping type noise. There is a guide type guy who explains to us about the burning ghats.
We hear some chanting coming from down the street, it gets louder and the men show up carrying a body, wrapped in bright red and yellow silks, ebing carried on a bamboo support. The men walk down to the Holy Ganghes (Ganga) and put the body in the water for it's last bath. The body is then brought onto the beach, the silks are taken off and only a white shroud is left wrapped around the body. At one time there are usually about 5-9 bodies being cremated. When a place is free and there has been sufficient firewood heaped up, the body is carried over and placed on top. Sandalwood powder is sprinkled on the body, along with some butters and other holy things. (If the family is rich enough, they will have the body burnt entirely with sandalwood, but it is obscenely expensive). So once all the prayers have been said, and powders sprinkled, goodbyes said, the body is set on fire. It is started from below, and also above- there is firewood piled on top of the body also. It was very surreal to see a man on fire. You don't really see the person- but I do have his feet forever etched on my brain. At the same time that all this was going on, there was another funeral being prepared. Certain people can not be burnt. They are not yet ready to achieve moksha for one reason or another. Among these people are pregnant women, children, sadhus, lepers, people bitten by snakes, and a couple of others. Because these people can not be cremated on the pyres, they are dumped into the Ganghes. The body was wrapped in bright orange and there were about 5 men that walked around it several times. They then tied it up and strapped it to a boat. The men all got into the boat and rowed to the middle of the Ganghes. ONce there, they just tipped the body over the side (it's weighted down with the a rock). After tipping it in, they threw water at the place it sunk down and rowed back to the shore.
It was really weird to watch someone being dumped into the middle of the river. So final. that doesn't sound right, but I can't explain the feeling. Then to look back from that funeral, hear another procession coming down the street chanting, and to look back to the mans feet still burning.
It takes about 5 hrs for a body to fully burn, and even then the body doesnt fully burn- the chest of men and the hips of women don't break down fully, so after the required amount of time, the ghat supervisor decides to stop the fire. The holy person goes down to the Ganghes with a terracotta pot, collects some water and throws it onto the pyre. The pot is then thrown on the pyre, broken and at this moment the family is supposed to let the grieving end and realise that the soul has been enlightened and is in heaven. The ashes are then gathered along with the bones that didn't burn and thrown into the Ganghes.
An interesting part about the burning ghats is that the bodies don't smell. You would expect it to be a horrible stench, but it doesn't smell at all. The ashes float into the air so you have to cover your face, unless you want to inhale some persons ashes, but other than that.. nothing.
All that being said, people come to Varanasi to bathe in the Great Holy Ganga River. I can say from experience that there are many other places to bathe in the Ganga that are much cleaner but it is holier here- bc Varanasi is such a holy city, I suppose. But not only is it holy, it is also severely dirty! Just downstream from the burning ghats, and the bones that come along with them, and the bodies that are decomposing at the bottom of the river, there are people bathing, brushing their teeth, swimming, whatever you can imagine. When I asked our guide why people were not scared to get sick, there is obviously much dirt in the water, he replied, straight faced "The Ganghes is holy- it is our Mother. A Mother would not hurt her children, and so the Ganghes will not hurt us." He was completely serious. The most scientific answer I have ever received I believe. I suppose not everything can be explained.
Holi Festival
Here I am, still in Rishikesh.
I have forsaken morning yoga class for a philosophy course at a nearby ashram- Swami G is fabulous.. and just so I don't mislead you, his "name" is Swamiji- which basically means "professor" or so. He was in the army for 20 yrs then fell in love with a woman at an ashram but because she had already chosen to live her life as a nun, he realised he couldn't be with her... so he decided to give everything up and to also live a spiritual life in the ashram. He loves and respects and cherishes her so much- it's so beautiful to see him talk about her.
The classes are really interesting- they centre mainly on the Bhagavad Gita, but go into many aspects of spiritual life in the modern day. The early morning classes, after having a cappucino, def make me miss university...
He explained the significance and history behind the festival that will be going on tonight and tomorrow morning. The festival in which I dart thru the street terrified at getting targeted. It is one of the 'best' festivals in India, so I am very fortunate to be here for it. I still don't want to take part in it. Here yu go.
And I apologize because I don't remember all the names of the gods and goddesses, so I will just give you the gist.
There is a boy who worships a god, he may even be an incarnation of him/it. His father actually hates this god very much and so tries to kill the boy. The father pushes him off the top of a mountain and the boy survives, he puts him in boiling oil, the boy survives, whatever he does, makes no difference, the boy just will not die. The father's sister (Holika) finds out that she has a special 'boon'- she can sit in fire and not be burnt. She has meditated for many many years and has been awarded this 'boon'. She tells her brother, look, i'll sit in the fire and pull the boy to me and he will burn for sure. She does this, and the boy survives but she starts to burn- she asks the god who gave her the boon why this is happening and he says 'you should only be using your power for good, never bad'. So she dies. The festival is named Holi after her, and tonight everyone builds huge fires (there are pyres everywhere) in celebration of her death. Then to continue the celebration, tomorrow people buy the bindi powder by the buckets and go around throwing the powder on everyone in the streets- the colors are beautiful- bright purples, oranges, reds, yellows, greens- and they also throw water on everyone passing by. Swamiji said that they celebrate this way because the mind likes to see colors and experience different things- but I don't feel the need to have colored powder poured on me and then doused with water- but i suppose that may just be my western mind getting involved. Silly Western mind.
To come her to the internet cafe, I had to walk down an aley. at the end of the alley were a bunch of men with a snare drum just marching around, coming towards me, and they were covered in color. Covered from head to toe. They were green and pink and orange all at the same time. So I ran back to my room and left by the other exit.
Don't think I'm ready. And apparently the Indians really love to target the Westerners. Maybe I'll sleep in tomorrow.
:)
We're FREEE!!!!!!
Yup- we bailed.
Ashram hell. I was totally up for the discipline, but not the crap food. Especially not for the amount I was paying. And there weren't even hot showers. Ok, I sound a little spoiled there, but in all seriousness, the main reason I didn't want to stay was that she had told us the class was small- 10-15 ppl max. There turned out to be 21 people AND not enough room for my legs in the yoga class SOOOO...
First, we came into town for the afternoon because we needed some provisions to get us thru.
Lead-up: They gave us our own plate and spoon and would come around and slop, really SLOP, baby food onto our plates. Half the people there were doing Vipassannas so they weren't speaking, so neither could we. That made meal time great fun- we couldn't even make fun of the food while eating it.
Then we washed our plates and went to meditate. To tell you the truth, the mantras, meditating, yoga and everything else was great, it was the fact that we were so many and got no personal attention- I couldn't do yoga properly bc we were all jammed into this small room.
I was thinking about my old yoga teacher in Rishikesh (actually, it's Laxman Jhulla) and how he would come by and tell me how I was doing each pose wrong, and how only in time would my body work itself out, bc now it is such a mangled mess I couldn't possibly think of doing all the poses properly... I missed him.
So we came into town, bought tons of food and ran into a couple of other people who had also headed into town- we were all quite negative. To also put this into context, the guru said the classes would be small, that the food would be wonderful and they were both really really big lies. And for all this we were paying 500 rupees a day- about 15$ (which is an obscene amount of money in India-)
We decided to leave as soon as we got back- worked out we could do great philosophy classes, yoga classes and do the chanting on our own in Rishikesh for less money. And not have to get up at 530am.
Funny thing is, the part that we were most nervous about was the 'yogic cleansing'. Basically you stick a beaker type thing with a nozzle in each nostril and pour water in til your sinus is cleared and the water comes out the other nostril. We were terrified. Now, after doing it this morning, we are all really interested in getting our own beaker type thing and doing it every morning. No, really. I'm serious. It was really strange too, cause I was squatting in a garden with this beaker thing in my nose (ok not beaker, but I can't think of a better word- just nozzle?) and the water was rushing around my head and it really started to hurt and I was thinking "Wait a sec. I know this feeling- it's like having water up my nose- oh ya. that's what i'm doing." (Hey, gimme a break, it was 630am and I had just done an hour of meditation).
Sorry this blog is all over the place- I should've thought about it before starting
out but now I just want to get it all out there for you.
So when we got there, we had lunch first and all the zombie like people that werent talking (Vipassannas) were eating with us in the hall. We were seated on the floor and the slop was plopped onto our plates in front of us, with some going on the floor and all. Best of all, was that we werent allowed to talk. Rob, Maya and I laugh about 75% of the time we are together (which probably explains why nothing ever gets done) so it was very hard not to joke about this predicament.
After lunch we went back to our rooms and it was all unleashed. I had worked out that if I were to continue this ashram thing, I will have to pretend I am a newsreporter (not kidding) and I was going to write a great story all about it. Mainly, I was doing it for you guys reading this.
Rob was pretending that he was a pig, grunting in his head and everything. That's really how it felt when they plopped the food into your trough.
Maya was playing Ashram Survivor- who would be the first person to leave?
So when we went to talk to Guru Lalita about leaving (we chose the ashram bc it had a female guru) she freaked out. She said we couldn't just leave, and if we wanted to we would have to pay the full 3500 rupees, instead of the 500/day that we were thinking it would be. It turned out that she was just interested in the Rupee, not the enlightenment process, so I got quite upset. We were trying to understand, in a place where you are concentrating on a better way of life, meditating, yoga-ing, sticking water up your nose and all those positive things, why would she want us to stay against our will? All for the Rupee.
So that really turned me off.
Now, we are back at the same hotel and will go to "Swami G" (again, not kidding) for our philosophy lecture tomorrow morning. I will go back to Dr Das for my yoga and we will leave beautiful, peaceful Rishikesh on the 16th to travel North to Dharamsala bc the word on the street is that the Dalai Lama is in his town giving some free lectures. Hopefully I can get in to 1 or 2.
It's nice to be back in a place where I recognize the cows.
Gotta go. Need to find one of those beaker nozzle things for tomorrow morning's cleansing.
No update- just a little Rishikesh.
Well, India.
What can I say really?
I have been here almost a month and the ups and the downs, well there are just too many things to say. I promise I will update you all very soon, but just a short blog for now.
I am staying in Rishikesh, a bit North of actually, which is North West India. I am North of Delhi- on the West side of Nepal- sorta.
I'm going to be staying here for at least 2 weeks- I really need it cause we have been speed traveling for about 2 and 1/2 weeks before getting here- I really need the relaxation and a place to enjoy breakfast every morning, instead of the crisps and bisquits after overnight trains (2 in a row! 3 trains in 3 days-)
So Rishikesh is a type of Yoga capitol. The Beatles apparently came here (and had all their money stolen) sometime in the past. It's a quiet little place, with many guest houses and massage places and yoga ashrams and meditation courses. I promise not to become too wonky, I just want to try it out. But believe me, there are some crazy people around here!
So this morning, after an hour and a half of yoga, I walked out of my guest houses' steep stairs turned left, wove my way past a couple of cows, dodged a man completely painted red who was insistant on Bindi-ing (putting the red paint on peoples' forheads) everyone walking past and walked across the bridge to the German bakery for my hot lemon ginger honey tea. The bridge is quite crazy actually cause there are a million monkeys that just play around on it all day. They steal people's scarves and food- you have to hide every thing before you go past. I have learned that monkeys are actually not cute little creatures- they are something close to rats. (For me anyhow, I don't like them). So there are 2 ways of traffic on the bridge and while waiting for my turn to go around the cow that's just hanging out, I realise Iam standing behind a monkey, who is also waiting his turn. This placeis crazy.
So, I have yoga class every morning from 9-10:30 and then potentially from 4:30-6. Fat chance in the 2 nd one but I will definitely try. We are getting up at 6am Monday morning to take an hour and a half jeep ride to hopefully get a glimpse of the Himalayas- we tried in Darjeeling- and sorta got a tiny peak, but hopefully the West will be better to us than the East. All those stories to come I promise.
On the 9th, I have checked myself into an ashram. The guru is a woman, which I really an excited for, because there are not that many women gurus. I will be doing yoga twice a day, meditation and will have philosophical lectures every night for a week. I will not be allowed to talk or make any noise until after lunch at 2pm. It entails way more than this, but I promise I will tell you all about it after I leave. As long as I do leave ;)
Don't worry- I'm only doing it for the certificate at the end. Maybe I'll open my own ashram in Montreal- I'm sure that could work. The West coast might be more lucrative though...
So that's me. What are you guys doing? email me and catch me up- Remember I go away on the 9th. :)
