Audience on boats

Evening Arti Puja

One of the most beautiful events in Varanasi is the evening arti puja. It is an offering ceremony to different deities as well as to mother Ganges, offerings include incense, light, music and flowers. There are a total of 12 stages with 12 Brahmin's dressed in gold silk and maroon, each offering the substances in unison and with delicate hands mudras ( gestures). The centre stage alter has a statue of  a gold Natraaj and Mother Ganga statue. The whole ghat , as well as the boats on the river are packed with pilgrims and tourist, snapping pictures, watching trance like or singing along with mantras and praises. Just beautiful and it reminds me that ultimately we humans are at the mercy of nature and the elements and that we need to show more respect to mother natures power.

offering of insence

evening crowd

offering of lights

Picking up Plastic

Yuck!

Clean up

The shit hole

bags of plastic

burning cloth and paper

looking a bit cleaner now

   

      

If there is ever work that seems like there is no end to it; it has to be picking up all the plastic from the banks of the Ganges. Rajesh and his friends have this crazy idea that they want to make the ghats (steps into the river) at the holy River Ganges clean and plastic free. Rajesh dreams of one day having all the chai stalls serve tea in environmentally friendly pottery cups, to have rubbish bins that people actually use at ever ghat. To have 2 local men for every ghat hired as security and to fine people who litter. To have more grassy areas with trees and flowers so that pilgrims can sit in the shade and enjoy this holy river. To have toilets for men and ladies with attached changing room for pilgrims to dress after their holy dip. He has a great vision but it all has to start somewhere. 

So far Rajesh and company have persuaded chia sellers in Assi ghat not to not use plastic cups and the peanut sellers not to use plastic bags. Every week he and his friends get together and pull plastic from the river and the river banks. Today I was willingly roped into the cleanup project. 

So how does this river get so filthy you may ask, well; after pilgrims take a dip in the river, they leave their old clothes on the river bank along with the paper and plastic bags that contained all their offering of flower garland, sweets, incense and fruit? They may have a picnic after their dip so there are also styrofoam plates and cups, crisp bags and biscuit wrappers left everywhere. Of course there are no toilets, so in amongst all this rubbish is human and animal shit. So today we all donned plastic gloves and with sacks in hand separated out paper and cloth for burning and plastic for removal. Today was nice and hot so the riverbank was stinking. We removed bags of plastic and dumped them in the designated area for rubbish removal but when and if that gets removed by the local authorities is another story. I think there the cows and water buffalo may eat all the plastic before the authorities get to picking up the plastic

It was a tough job today but someone has to start and I am so happy, even honoured to do my wee part and to support the people who will one day (hopefully) turn this place into a real holy river paradise. 

WELL DONE LADS !

Lunch time

The gate

Buddha Smile School (cont.)

Yesterday I went back to Sarnath to visit that Buddha Smile school to meet the students and take photos. Entering the school the noise level is overwhelming; kids are everywhere. Some kids are running to the bathroom, some getting their cuts and scratches tended too, some doing errands for the teacher, some being naughtily, some arriving late and some small ones crying over something or other. When I arrived the little kids were having their health and hygiene practice class; i.e. cleaning their teeth and washing their faces. So you can image the teachers rolling up the sleeves of 30 small jumpers, fights over who had the toothpaste, kids splashing water on each other and 30 small toothpaste filed mouths saying Namaste! to the visitor. Mayhem, is maybe the best way to descried the scene but everyone was smiling and with a great feeling of happiness pervading the air.

Teachers lunch break

lesson time

The school is very small and teaches kids from ages 5 to 15, each classroom holding anywhere from 15 to 30 students in a class and there are 8 classrooms. As I may have mentioned earlier the building is bare concrete with some paint on the walls and each class is furnished with benches which serve as tables and chairs. The children come to school at 7.30am and have breakfast before their lessons they are also served lunch before classes finish at 1.30 pm. For many of these kids this will be the only food they get in a day.

Principle and doctor

 Each subject, which includes Hindi, English, math, social studies, history and art, is taught for about 40 minutes then the teachers rotate classrooms to teach another subjects. In this way, since space is tight, time is not wasted moving the children from classroom to classroom. 

Rajan and Sukdev

Each child has a uniform complete with woolly hat and scarf however many of these uniforms look like they have not been washed since they were handed out. Rajan tells me that for many of the children their home is a tent on the side of the road, or a broken down room with no light and no running water. She tries her best to keep the kids clean but with limited washroom facilities in the school it is a constant battle to keep the school and the kids clean. The children’s parents are the poorest of the poor. Their job include driving rickshaws, cleaners, labourers or unemployed doing odd jobs now and again. Unfortunate many of the parents are also on drugs and alcohol so the children are left often to fend for themselves. Rajan says that many of the kids either bring their friends or siblings to school to get fed and be taken care of. Many of the kids also to go to work or beg after school in order to supplement family income.

These children have been born into terrible conditions and it is more than admirable just how dedicated Rajan and her husband are to educating these kids so that as they grow they can help themselves get out of poverty. By providing love, care and education and a safe place to dream these children have a much better chance to have a positive future. Thank you Rajan and Sukdev !!!

 http://buddhas-smile-school.org/

Leper artist

 Meet an incredible artist

On my stroll the other day I met this lovely gentleman whose art work is not only beautiful  but a small miracle. He lives in the leper colony near the main ghat and due to his disease he has lost all of his fingers and toes but his smile and heart are huge. Most days he can be found on the steps of the river drawing in pen portraits of the various Hindu deities. His drawings are very fine and he seems to have the patience of a saint as every lines is a struggle for him. He has his pen strapped on to his stump at the base of where his thumb was. Unfortunately I could not speak much to him as I have very little Hindi  but he showed me how he worked and was more that happy to have someone admire his work. I believe he sells the drawings but made no effort to push me to buy  one, I think he is more interested to draw than make money. He is an amazing person who made me think about how often I say  " oh I can't do this or that", when really all I need to do is just enjoy trying and see the beauty than can appear.

Ganesha

Zhiva

Offering to Pilgrims and Beggers. Makersankranti Festival

Yesterday we had a great day. The first day of Kumba Mella thousands of people came to take a morning bath in the Ganga. At 4am they started to arrive in droves. Rajesh and his band of merry men club together every year and make kejery to offer to the pilgrims and beggars. They also often invite stray foreigners to join in the fun. Apparently eating kejeri is also part of the days celebrations. They had two hugs pots on bricks with a wood fire underneath. The pots contained water, rice, dal, potatoes, cauliflower, peas, chillies and tomatoes, boiled together until mushy. Then masla, salt, mustard oil, ghee, coriander and more chille  were added. Yummy, mushy and spicy. The kejeri was then loaded into metal buckets and about 6 of us carried these buckets down the line of beggars that had gathered on the road side over the past few days. We ladeled this tasty mush out onto the beggars metal plates and they all seems either shocked or curious that a foreigner was doing this job.  It was a very humbling but fun way to celebrate Kumba Mella.

cutting chillies

smokey

child beggars with kejary

pots of kejery

line of begars

Burning Ghat.

The biggest tourist attraction on the ghats is the burning ghats where families come to burn the bodies of their recently deceased relatives. A trip to Varanasi is just not complete without visiting this ghat for some time and just contemplating the impermanence of human life. I spent about an hour there one afternoon and watched the flames of around 12 funeral pyres consume the corpses of 12 people. I can hear you think that must have been hard to watch and yes it was. In so many ways, we always want to avoid anything uncomfortable but in another way once I got past the harsh truth of seeing so many dead bodies there was something almost comforting about seeing the bare faced truth; we all die and it is not a pretty site or a comfortable thing to face.

 I could go on about the awful smell of burning flesh, watching the flames turn skin black or frazzle nicely dyed hair, seeing feet, legs and arms protrude from a small mountain of wood or the dogs that fought by river side over the morsel of roasted human flesh; but I won’t. For the men who work at the ghat they face this sight every day and it is all in a day’s work for them. They build the fires, carry the bodies, place the body on the wood, make sure the fires keep burning and burn every part of the body, then they have to sift through the ashes and hand the ashes over to the family for disposal in the river.

This uncomfortable vision before me is just the top layer of repulsion that makes as all turn away from death. In the west death is never talked about and is always dressed up nicely, it is not messy at all and even in our mourning we are taught to be controlled or self composed. I had to force myself to stand and get beyond the messy, unclean, uncomfortable, unstructured and uncontrollable sight before me and take this opportunity to see and feel something deeper.

The ceremony itself (what little I could learn) is really beautiful and involves sending the body back to the elements; earth water, fire and air. The corpse is draped in clean white cloth and then coloured cloth with gold broche. It is then put on a stretcher and carried by the male members of the family down to the river side where it is then placed on the earth and then soaked for a while in the holy water of the Ganga. Once placed on the pile of nicely arranged wood, the body it then sprinkled with sandal wood and other substances. The eldest son or closest male relative of the deceased will then light the fire. He has already that day been shaved of his hair has taken a bath in the Ganga and is dressed in white clothes as is the traditional style of a Brahmin. As the wood starts to catch fire the relatives and or priest will do prayers and then watch the fire burn. The fire can last several hours and with about 12 fires going at once there are many people standing around in mourning.

 People mourned differently and were allowed to do so. Some sat alone in a corner tears, or stared trance like the flames of the fire. Many people were crying and being held or embraced by other relatives. This communal show of emotion I felt was in some ways also cleansing for the grieving relatives. A kind of purging of sadness so that they could move on with their lives. All I could do was try to feel their pain and show respect by bowing my head and covering my hair. It was in some way refreshing to see people being open with their grief.

That hour was a harsh teaching on how to fully appreciating my life and be grateful for my good health, the great people around me and all the comforts that I have. I know I have wasted a lot of time on trivial things over the years but an hour at the burning ghats make me more determined to use take every day as a gift and use it wisely and in a good way coz I have no idea how long I have got left.

Flower seller

 People on the ghats

Gambling on the ghat

boat building the old fashion way

Zhiva baba

Nap time for this Zhiva baba

every day is laundry day

 painter of dieties

Buffalo crossing

holy men singing devotional songs

Swami Pramanhans

The ghats have to be one of the best places in the world to people watch. So many locals doing their thing whether it is building boats, painting on the ghat walls, doing laundry or selling trinkets and flowers to pilgrims with which to make offers to Mother Ganga. The tourists and pilgrims too can be hilarious to watch. Pilgrims come from all over India and Nepal, they bath every morning (thought best not to take a photo of that) and make offerings throughout the day. They jostle each other for a place on the river bank and make such a mess leaving their old clothes and offerings strewn everywhere. One thing that every ghat has in common is that men use the corners as urinals, the smell of piss is horrid; such a holy city but also a common toilet. I don’t get it, can’t the city government provide pee place or at least wash down the ghats now and again?

Anyway; in one area, near the main ghat is little Asia. Young backpackers from Japan and Korea seem to stay in this area and it is fun to see these travelling young college kids dress up in Indian clothes and jewellery, have their hands decorated with henna designs and wearing the red tika on their foreheads. Varanasi for them has to be such a mind blower and a trip of a lifetime. There are also many foreigner hippies who hang around and partake of the local weed and look like they have been here since the 60's. Scary!  The locals too just hang out on the ghat so there are always small groups of men gambling at sunset.

With Kumba Mella now happening there are also of many Babas descending on Varanasi. Babas are Hindu holy men and I have been learning that there are different kinds of Babas with differing methods of practice who worship different deities. Celibate Babas to ones who smoke, drink, eat meat and case women. It is hard to know who is a real Baba and who is not, that is why it is better to ask the locals who is who and which Babas are just after the tourist money to fuel their smoking habit. In this situation the words of His Holiness the Dalai Lama seem very appropriate, "check, check and check again any and all gurus." I meet a Swami (a Baba who is a teacher) who is on hunger strike. Swami Pramanhaus says he is protesting the rape of the girl in Delhi, like so many others he is asking that the rapist be executed for their crime. He claims to have not eaten or drank anything for 15 days and to have 5 million followers who support him; hmmmm? He is asking the chief minister of Utter Pradesh to visit him so he can make his demands in person; only then will he finish his hunger strike. I was a bit impressed with him but also curious as to if he was for real or not. Once I talked with Rajesh and his friends about him I was informed that Swami is always on one hunger strike or another protesting various political topics. They were also sure that he must have had some food or drink as he always looks the same never any thinner. They think he just want to be famous but not a true Baba with spiritual power. Well at least he is supportive of women and making more publicity against rape. You just never sure who you'll meet in a day and it is great that people are always open to talking.