Song of India - X - Banaras

Banaras is the holy city of the Hindus. Buddha was also enlightened and gave his first sermon close by so it is the center of pilgrimage for Hindus and Buddhists alike. Everyone prays to be able to make the journey once before he dies. Therefore it is a cosmopolitan city full of all kinds of people from all over the land. She draws to her all the strangeness and variety of religion. I could feel the footsteps falling on the thousands to reach here – the dedication of centuries. Barefoot, sandaled, over the long hot dusty miles they come. Tired and covered with dust from the endless dusty plains of India. They arrive at last! There go provisions, banners, as they make their way down to the sacred Ganges. Then back to the homes of India flows the sacred water in jugs, pots, urns, and tiny sacred vessels – a blessing for the living and sacrament for the dead. In a train station on the way to Banaras thousands squatted on the platform by their carrying-poles with a large jug strapped on each end – a sea of people squatting by their earthen jugs, a sea of heads. Waiting, with the patience that is India.

Banaras is the mystery of religion which the finger of science has not washed away. The center of most cities is downtown, business, but the center of Banaras is the temples along the river bank. Fabulous Banaras, city of temples. Banaras or Varanasi is built on a big bend in the Ganges and takes its name from two streams, the Vanuna and the Assi that join to form the mainstream here. Fr the last 3000 years it has built itself on the west, outside bank of the curve, permanently fixing the high embankment with concrete and stone abutments, and massive temple walls rising in tiers. It stretches several miles from the palace of Maharajah Chet Singh and Panaras University to the south to Kasi (the old part of the city) and a modern bridge spanning the river on the north. The tiers of temples and embankment contrast strangely with the flat, empty flood plain of the other side. The rich variety of the one bank contrasts strangely with the emptiness of the other.

Along the bank is the endless variety that is Banaras. The ghats (lading places for boats) are filled with endless variety. They are filled with boats and people. Then there are bathing and burning ghats. There is everything along the embankment from palaces for princes to stone cubicles for pilgrims, from ornately carved temples to plain concrete surfaces, from towering walls to muddy paths. It is a place to explore. There are people of all kinds from neatly dressed businessmen, scholars, gentlemen, pilgrims, yogis, to washerwomen, bearers, and beggars. All are here. From every part of India they have come to the holy city and the sacred Gaga.

It is evening and I set out to see my first view of the ghats. I hasten on, oblivious of everything but my first glimpse of the river scene. Past the dark buildings on the dusty street – hastening on….Ambling people and animals – do they know my heart? Peering ahead, nothing but street – when can I see the river?

Then the street forks and I take the right-hand side. It curves around and there is space ahead. Yes, it is open. A few more moments and lo, the steps! And the Ganges!

I am standing at the top of a stream of steps wide as the hillside, flowing
down to the Ganges. They stop only at a temple to the right. The whole hill is
stepped, running to the river. Yes, this is the picture come to life. And the temples are large, high and real.

Slowly, reverently, I step down the ancient, worn steps full of the past, that even bare feet have rounded and hollowed thru the years, mellowing and smoothing the stone thru the centuries till it seemed almost human, s long has it absorbed the impress of humanity. It seemed to live, with them. A dry dust covering all seemed to add to the hoary, inscrutable age.

And below was the Ganges! It was flowing dark and slow, flowing into dimness. Water and stone merged to a quiet harmony, peaceful and eternal.

On the opposite shore was nothing, only stretching space, and peace. It was a surprise to see only the river and the vast evening there.

On the right a temple rises high from its heavy foundation in the hillside below. The steps stretch down. At the base of the temple seated on the huge stone ledges are a group of beggars. More dark rags sit along the steps and huddle in the shade.

It is my first glimpse of the ghats. I returned to my room, ready for the morrow.

The next day I set out to explore the ghats. The approach on the street above is lined with beggars – dark figures standing or sitting with cup in front. “Baksheesh, Baksheesh, “they cry. But some sleep or talk, paying no attention to the passersby, letting the bowl speak for itself. Some are deformed, some lepers with toes or fingers sluffed away. They wear dark rags.

Many wooden beads and spread out for sale on blankets along the street. A yellow clad monk is selling too, and bargains as well as the next. Other beads march high in the air, dangling from crossbars on high wooden poles, each with a colorful ribbon dangling down from the top. They are Hindu prayer beads. Men make their way thru the crowds with the poles.

Sometimes a group of pilgrims walk in procession to the river, carrying banners and playing queer musical instruments half-Western but smaller, and crashing cymbals. They are jubilant but tired, and their saris faded and dusty from their long journey to the holy city. At last they have arrived at Baharas, at the sacred Ganga!

I too have arrived. At last the street comes to the top of the steps and the river below. These are the temples! This is the Ganga! You want to fling yourself down in exhilaration. The scene is fabulous. This, the Dasasimedvh, is the busiest of the ghats, always teeming and alive. It takes many visits to absorb its rich variety.

You stand amidst the beggars and cows and look down. The steps are broad and stop only at the solid walls of a temple on the right. A noisy, busy ghat in the day. More beads spread out on blankets more beggars. A few sanyasees with long hair and draped saffron cloth. The sun is bright and hot and it is dusty dry. The steps and temple walls gleam yellowish in the glare of the sun. A few businessmen in clean, white draped cloth and white Hindu hats stand talking. Barefoot figures in saris and dhotis pass up and down. Who are pilgrims, who Banarases….I cannot tell. Only many people, movement, noise.

Sometimes herds of heavy black water buffalo come down the steps to the water. They look rather formidable, especially if they stop and bellow and look back challengingly over their shoulders as if daring you to prevent them from going to the water. And then the tender or small boy will come along and give them a slap on the rear, or thump with a stick and they move on, looking harmless again. I heard they are very clever, and by their loud snorting and dark looks try to frighten people into giving them the right-of-way. But occasionally a small boy does not hesitate to slap the rear of a sacred cow and call their bluff. It looks funny to see them walking down the steps like people, going to the water to drink or bathe, or ambling along the paths by the water.

As you approach the bottom of the steps little boys run up – “Memsahib, Memsahib” – and then an English word – “Boat, Boat,” and start running down again hoping you will follow. For ‘ghat’ means ‘landing place’, and at the foot of many of them are boats to carry travelers or sightseers up and down the river to look at the two miles of temples, homes, and palaces. “Memsahib, Memsahib, two rupees, two rupees.” Finally “Memsahib, one rupee, one rupee”, but I did not want to ride. Far more fun to walk in the midst of the strangeness. I knew their bargaining well by this time tho, so long in India: probably for a Baranasi it was 50 Np. In India I bargained some, just to let them know I knew, but never pressed to the end, knowing their need.

I was surprised to hear a loud speaker blaring, and following the sound fund it came from a crowd near the water. A large canvas awning was stretched over a group of people seated around their leader, a yogi of some sort. He was chanting into the microphone and the group would answer. They chanted ‘Siva’ or something over hundreds of times with lagging zeal. The leader wore saffron cloth and some of the followers were dressed like religious men too. Others wore only loin cloths and all manner of different things. Two of the men had strange orangish-colored matted hair, like hundreds of matted pigtails sticking out all over. It looked revolting. At first I thought it was unkempt or a wig, but I found out they made it that way, pounding it till it becomes messed and matted. It doesn’t even look like hair anymore. Whatever the significance is, it looks terrible. I stood quite a while watching the people and listening to the chants. How strange this ancient setting with a modern microphone. Someone tried to translate the chant for me but I couldn’t quite understand. They went on and on.

Finally I turned off this noisy, busy ghat and walked upstream along the river, following the path between the high temples and the top of the embankment and the river below. It dipped low, to the water’s edge, then high again. The crowd and noise faded away and it became pleasant. The sun shone brightly. The broad yellow steps turn into a hard-packed clay path along the mud embankment. A thin film of dust is everywhere. It makes the sun seem even drier. Cows and water buffalos slowly make their way along the same path and you pass them again and again. On the left-hand side high above are the temples, tiers and tiers of temples, and a few pillared terraces.

Small children chase each other up and down the mud bank and play along the steps. There are many children along the ghats, playing their simple, toyless games. Sometimes they stop and stare – brown barefoot urchins with big, black eyes, their arms around each other. Sometimes a small one will hang back behind his brother and peek around. But usually they are not shy, but with beautiful smiles ready to be friends. Sometimes they call out for baksheesh and follow, hand out, along the ghat. Sometimes they follow only in curiosity. Sometimes there is a little boy, his dark body covered with gray dust and only a string around his loins. Yet they are staring at me, not him – a strange reversal.

The next ghat has fresh white concrete, wide and stepped. Along the edge are ledges to sit on. At intervals below giant cement cubes rise from the steps and people lounge on top. Some of them have enormous umbrellas overhead. Once on a narrow back street in Binaries, I came across a gigantic basket hanging on a wall. It was more than three lengths of me across and made of woven straw. Surely they couldn’t use such a big thing for making rice! Finally along the river that day I realized what it had been – one of these huge, heavy umbrellas for the sun.

Along the water’s edge are jutting, octagonal cement platforms filled with bathers and devotees. One large man with a tiny loincloth stands and raises his arms toward the sun, worshiping in its warmth and absorbing its penetrating power. Then he turns around several times and raises his arms again…finally sitting cross-legged, still, in its full radiance, meditating.

Other devotees come to bathe in the Ganges. Usually they wrap a small dhoti around their clothes and then unwrap the one underneath, thus simply changing clothes. Then they wash and bathe in the river, usually without soap, and wash their clothes, ‘tool cloth’, they call it. Everyone says cloth for clothes, and in India it is quite true for all clothes except the women’s blouses are cloth - long cloth wrapped around in countless different ways. But often the cloth looks just as gray as before it was washed, for the river’s muddiness can hardly make it clean. Others spread the cloth, six or nine yards long, along the steps to dry, and looking down you see long cloth after cloth in the sun.

There is a gully between this ghat and the next, and the path dips down t the water with a few boards across – up the brick steps rising on three sides to the landing platform above. Nothing here but a bare temple wall tho, and a few men in dhotis dotted here and there on the steps. Below, boats are tied between an array of tall thin bamboo poles stuck in the water.

The next ghat is high and muddy, with the temples high above. It is occupied by a herd of black water buffalo moving around. As you approach wondering how to get around you notice that most of them are tied to small metal rods stuck in the ground. You hope they don’t move as you pick your way among the hulking rears. Ah, safe!

But there is only a looming, castle-like stone wall ahead. It must be the end. But searching, you see a high narrow ledge – open with sheer drop-off below, and most of the space taken by more black water buffalo chained along it. You reach the high ledge and cross carefully. Even so high, it is thick with the gray, powdery dried mud. It curves around and there is a way off. The path continues.

The next ghat is full of people in white cloth, with a railed platform near the water. A group of people is gathered around a man explaining or demonstrating something with a paper, but I can’t see what it is, or understand. If you could understand Hindi or the many languages and dialects spoken here, what a rich world would open, for here are people from all over India, and from all walks of life. How lovely to sample such a rich store.

And there is the temple under water! Only the elaborately-carved top arches upright out of the Ganges. It has slid into the water as so many before it – but the top remains. They say it was cursed, but many are its fellows below. The sacred river does not distinguish. You stare at the sand-colored stone arches of the submerged temple and it takes on a dramatic meaning.

Along the back a few merchants sell in stalls of weathered wood. In spite of the bright sun there is a little color along the ghats – white, yellow, brown, slate clay – even the water is brown. But the sky is bright, cloudless sunny blue, lending its enchantment. Only variations of gray, brown, black, and white-yellow – tending toward the undifferentiating of time. No refreshing green (except for a few trees high on the walls), or accents of red. Most of the variation is shape, form, mass, height, depth. The whole scene is ancient. Only the steadiness of the sun’s warmth flowing thru your body makes you aware you are living in the present.

Only gradually does it dawn on you that the river is not always this way – that people are not always laughing and talking on these steps, or bathing on the platforms below. Yes, the great length of the steps going down and down – how far! – and the coating of dried mud everywhere. Of course…the monsoon!

How different the ghats must look then, disappearing in the swirling, dangerous brown mass come alive and rising forty feet up the bank. Even the temples of the gods are not sacrosanct and many wash away into its depths. The one carved temple top we can see above the water, but how many share its fate below we will never know.

This is the reason for the heavy concrete embankments and massive stone walls. This is why the grey mud everywhere after the river recedes. Each year they must dig out anew from the grey mud. Even now, close to the next monsoon, they are still working. I watch them above, carrying basket after basket full of dried mud on their heads, gradually uncovering a deep pit of some sort – perhaps a tank, or foundation for a new temple. It was more than twenty feet above the river, and it was hard to imagine the water so high. Like coiled strength it lay below, waiting. Soon it would rise again.

Pratu told me how people threw gold or jewels in the river since it is the sacred Ganga, and in its muddy waters lay many precious jewels. Every year when they dig out after the flood they examine each basketful of dirt for treasure. The ordinary findings belong to the company, but if an object of very great value or antiquity is discovered it must be turned over to the government. How it stirred the imagination, this river with gold and jewels and even temples in its muddy depths!

One day as we were walking along Pratu found an old coin lying in the dust. It was a large, silver-colored one with engraved pictures and some kind of letters. It was very old and he could not make out the letters. He said it might be an old Greek coin. He had seen a small boy pick it up and had given him an anna for it. “Only an anna for a valuable coin,” I said. “That’s not fair. We should give him more.” “It will only excite him and make him suspicious,” he said. And sure enough when we gave him another anna soon the mother came running up and wanted to know what her son had given away. He showed it to her and offered it to her, but the two annas were more than something strange she could not use, and she did not take it but returned, satisfied. What romance this river! What might not turn up?

Sometimes things are built purposely to be washed away by the monsoon flood. At one place along the bank there is a strange giant-like figure lying on the bank, with stiff outstretched arms and staring, popping eyes. It is like a child’s carving or totem pole, in gaudy colors. Each year it is washed away and made again.

At last you come to the burning ghats. At first I didn’t recognize what it was except that I couldn’t go any further along the water and had to climb some steps so filled with mud that it was difficult to find a footing. They led to a cement platform about fifteen feet above, and looking over I saw my first funeral pyres. They were rectangular stocked piles of wood burning but I could make out no bodies. It was not so shocking as I had supposed. The smoke which arose had a distinct odor however of mixed burned flesh and wood. It is an unforgettable sweetish smell. You try to avoid the smoky gusts rising with the shifting winds.

A few men are working around the fire below, poking at it with long sticks, and I notice now a pair of feet sticking out that he is trying to push in. Evidently the body is underneath more logs on top. Except for these workers the space below is cleared, only two or three relatives standing at one side, but most of them on the platform above where I am. The bodies are burning and three waiting to be burned, but the relatives are few – only two or three small clusters. Perhaps only a few come, or they have come a long way to the Ganges. Sometimes unidentified bodies are burned too.

Below three bodies covered with colored cloth lie strapped to stretchers made of long poles by the water’s edge. The attendants start building the pyre. First two heavy logs are laid parallel on the ground, then smaller ones laid crosswise on top. Smaller wood is laid over. Sometimes sweet smelling sandalwood is used, but it is expensive. Finally the body is lifted on and covered with more wood, perhaps so it won’t ‘sit up’ during the burning (due to tendons shrinking). The whole is covered with kerosene and the fire is started by placing a flaming torch in the mouth. It does not seem so bad as one might think. Usually you cannot even see the body except for feet or such sticking out.

Slightly higher than this platform is another ledge, up among the tops of the first tier of temples and at the base of the next tier – half way between the city above and the river below. It is wide and bumpy, covered with dark red-brown dirt pounded into the bricks below, slick and hard-pressed by thousands of bare and sandaled feet. It flows around dark stones jutting here and there, and in the middle is actually a temple top protruding from the stone. The base is square but gothic-window-shaped sections lean back to a single point at the top, forming the sand-colored stone dome. There are carvings in each section, each becoming progressively smaller, in this rhythmically sculptured stone. At the corners like gargoyles are ancient carvings of demons and gods.

On one side is a stylish rather Chinese-looking eight-sided wooden open roofed pavilion with a low carved railing and seats around the edge. It is inviting and you can gaze at the high empty windows of the castle-like temple close by. But it is blown thru with the acrid, sweetish smoke from the funeral pyres below, and suddenly you know why it is neglected and deserted. It is too bad, for it is a lovely place, looking out over the water and all the fascinations of the view.

A few children play among the surrounding piles of brushwood and orangish-colored logs out for the fires below; then run over to the temple top and hide and walk around the edge. It is an interesting playground. Like them, I like to wander around the strange forms, temple tops and accumulated rubbish.

Along the back is a row of high temples with steps leading up to the town above. The temples are of lofty stone, side by side. Underneath the corner of one of them is a sunken room lined with bricks and made into a worship place. A black-stoned Nandi (Siva’s Bull) site placid, immobile, with head erect. Stone lignums of all sizes rise from the hard-packed earth. A few dried up yellow and white flowers lie here and there. The cool, shadowy, half-sunken room seems to groan with centuries weighing the mind of man in that deep impulse of worship, and wearing smooth the lignums till at last even the stone is worn away. What is that pressure so real, so potent you can feel it all around?

At the back on one side the ledge runs off into a narrow, sloping passageway gradually leading back into the town above. It runs between tall temples cutting off the river view.

At the beginning of this passageway stair stepped along the sides are ghastly things the size of dog houses, barely enough to turn around in, with people hunched inside n raised wooden flooring over the muddy water at the bottom. Rotted rags and flesh blend into one dark mass. Some are lepers, some beggars. By each opening outside is a blackened cooking pot, and by some of them squats a figure bound in rags.

The passageway continues, and on either side between the tall temples is a series of small niches, some barred and shuttered and some open. Inside are a few gods, lingum, flowers, incense and food. They are maintained by various religious sects throughout India, these shrines along the Ganges, and some of them have priests in constant worship. Gradually the passageway leads into the narrow streets of the town above.

All along the ledge, as in the streets above are figures crouching among the dark nooks and crevices – wrinkled and old like living carvings grown into their surroundings – the same color, the same age. An old figure scrunched down by the wall, watching, waiting, as if it had always been there, even grown there, like a fungus in a dark corner. You can feel the dirt in the sagging, limp sari, and the wild tangled hair and wizened face. Perhaps they were rooted, one with the earth. As if they had grown there, unkempt and uncared for. Withered, shrunken people as old as time. How long have they been there? What have their eyes seen?

How often I wished I could blend in unnoticed too, and have the perfect freedom of anonymity – to sit at the base of a temple. To sit at night and watch the Ganges and the people. To return to Banaras and explore unceasingly its strangeness and its people – each grotto and temple. To know each person. What dreams led them to Banaras, what have their eyes seen? And if I am born again I want to live here along the Ganges, a dark figure unnoticed, blending into the ancient stone, free to roam. To sit at night undisturbed along the bank of the Ganges and wander among the temples as my home. To explore all the dark nooks and crevices. To become one with Banaras.

The next day I explored the old part of the town above. It is hundreds of years old, with its labyrinth of streets and business stalls. The streets are only a narrow space between stone walls rising 2, 3 4 Indian stories high and so close together you can almost touch the sides – like walking down a long, deep slot. And the interior is labyrinthine with one slot leading into another at odd intervals, angling, turning off at random, with dead ends and curious loops. Narrow steps lead up and down to different levels. Purposely made, Pratu said, for protection against an enemy. The gates at the narrow street-ends also could be closed and the street shut off. The surrounding temples and buildings were indeed massive, and at places along the top of the river embankment were heavy double walls. As for the interior, not only would it confuse an enemy, but also the inhabitants. Pratu said he got lost here for eight hours one day before he finally found his way out.

The walls of the labyrinth are cement-covered brick or stone, the cement crumbling here and there with age. It is cool in the depths of these walls, where the sun only penetrates a few hours, or half-way down the walls, depending on the direction of the street. Even warm and sunny above, the street is cool. The walls and stones are grey and shadowy at the bottom of this canyon, except where the sun penetrates and turns them golden. The narrow strip of sky overhead is always blue, and the rooftops irradiant with warm, sunny light. Underneath the stones are bumpy and uneven, sometimes wet and slippery with muddy water or dirt hard-packed in the depressions. Sometimes there is dung.

Rounding a corner at anytime you may come across a cow or bull ambling somberly toward you, or standing crosswise on the steps and blocking the way. You wait a moment till they take a notion to move, or if they are particularly contemplative, till someone comes along and heads them off again. Mostly they are quite harmless but you never know. Sometimes they fight, and occasionally come plunging down the stairs at a great rate, with their massive weight. A Brahman bull is quite impressive with his thick neck and hump and defiant stand. The young ones, smooth and sleek and strong are hardly known for docility and sometimes they have a glint in their eye so that you are glad the natives are around, or that they are going in the other direction. Just as soon as you get too sure of yourself and begin to take them for granted one will lean over and give you a bump, as if to prove they really can be dangerous if they choose. So there is always a slight element of danger in the streets, in all towns, but especially in Siva’s city, full of his bulls.

You walk along the narrow passageways, your eye stretching ahead, taking care not to slip on the bumpy cobblestones worn round and smooth, like dark clay when they are wet. You hold onto the ledge f one of the tiny shrines as you descend the steps here and there. They are recessed niches in the wall along the side, tiny shrines, with statues f the gods inside, on Nandi (Siva’s bull), and many lingum – lingum of all sizes – upright cylinders of stone in a stone base – pure black, or white-veined marble, like ancient stone candles mellowed and worn smooth by time. The scriptures say that lingum means source, or origin. The lingum in this ancient religion can be taken either as masculine or feminine element, penis or egg. And sometimes it stands in an oval-shaped basin which catches the water poured over it, and here they say it is both masculine and feminine, with the female receptacle. But mainly it is a symbol in their religion. They are worn smooth by the countless jars of holy water poured over them, some worn down to only little nubbins, finally to be washed away by the sacred Ganges water. You stand and wonder at the devotion, every day and every day, even wearing away stone and brown wrinkled hands pressed together in endless devotion century after century. There is an aura of sacredness, of prayer and the deep longing of the human hear, rapt and stilled, one with the divine. In the little shrines are no silver or gold, only the element of Indian life – stone. There is nothing but intensity, and it flows out and melts into the depths of the soul. For India is not outward but in the heart and soul.

There are many gratings along the wall. At first you don’t pay any attention to them, assuming they are more tiny shrines or heavily barred cellar windows. But gradually you realize they are something else – that they are for people! They are tiny mutts for pilgrims or religious people who want to stay for some time in the holy city, by the river. You try to peer behind the grating into the darkness. They are stone cubicles hardly long enough to lie down in, and probably impossible to stand up in. It comes as a shock, tho it is quite possible to live in them. But to lie inside like an animal on a cold stone shelf, the heavy weight of the wall pressing in, separated from the world by an inch of dark, latticed wood, listening to the sounds of the passing of the life outside. Perhaps they sit and meditate, or spend the day by the Ganges or in the temples, returning only at night to crawl onto their shelf.

Sometimes the real homes of people who live in Banares are not much better. Glimpses thru lopsided doorways into noisy, black interiors, hardly rooms, but some sort of deserted space into which the family has moved. They seemed like bombed out houses and emergency living in times of crises. A confusing array of poles and boards is barely visible in the smoky interior, and dark moving bundles that are children. What all is inside you can only imagine.

Other houses are light, but stark naked. The typical Indian house seems empty, is empty, and sometimes has little more than a mud-ring stove and some cooking equipment including a blackened pan for rice. They do not use silverware, tables, chairs, or even diapers or toilet paper. We cannot imagine living with nothing as they do. Even our pioneers had things. But India does not. Somehow that never happened, never accumulated from generation to generation. The only necessity is rice and water, and sometimes there is not even that. In India nothing is nothing.

But other building have steps, symmetrical columns and archways in front, and smooth cement floors inside, and rooms that look like rooms, even empty, and regular window openings (never glass or screens, but several bars for protection) with light coming in. They are cool, slightly damp gray stones, a pleasant refuge from the sun. Even here, the cooking is likely to be primitive (even as recently it was in our country) with wood and dung. Rarely one sees a kerosene stove. Even big institutions use huge wood fires inside long stone ovens. I saw only one electric stove in India.
In general the buildings were strong and well-made. It was only the insides that were strange or empty. A building is only an outside wall, and at the point we start to make the interior they are already finished and do no more. They build the wall and move in. Besides that the typical house has no furniture, only two or three empty stone rooms. Some houses of course have beds and tables and chairs. And even the poorest homes usually have several brightly colored pictures of the gods hanging on the wall. What are typically Indian furnishings in the higher classes it is difficult to say, as the furnishings when there are any seem to be Western.

The rooftops of the buildings are open terraces bathed in the bright sun – open space high above the cramped streets below. It is fun to climb to the top and look out over the flat rooftops. A few enormous treetops ruffle their dark green leaves. A few other people stroll above too in the fresh air and sun. Everything sparkles in the warm golden sun. Without the sun Banaras would be drab and colorless, for there is little color in the city itself. But the sun turns the drabness to royal golden and gives a cheerful, festive air.

Sometimes curious things are on the rooftops. You never know what you may find. Once it was startling to find a cow on a low roof, having climbed the steps below. And the rooftop of one ancient building overlooking the Ganges is full of huge stone semicircles are 15-20 feet across with scales marked on them.

At one place along the top is the Nepali temple. Narrow stone steps twist up from the river, and long gnarled roots of trees grace the ledges. It is famous for a series of wooden carvings around the top depicting parts of the kama sutra on love and varieties of sex relations. There is one interesting part showing the relative importance of head, heart, will and body. In the ordinary person head should be stronger than heart or emotion, but in the superior person emotion or sensitivity is primary, pressing into divine realms. Their insight here is quite keen.

Sometimes the tall walls turn into a narrow strip of blue at the end of a slot and you know where you are – you have come to the high bank above the Ganges. You can stand on the top and look down into the seething forms below – a different sensation of strength, intricacy, space, variety, depending on where you have emerged on the bank. Sometimes a vast open view, the whole bank stepped broadly down to the river. Sometimes gnarled, winding twisting steps leading down. Sometimes fresh, smooth white cement. Sometimes dark, crumbling mud.

Down below an intricate maze of form springing on form, variety added to variety, century overlying century, time added to time without plan. Heavy squared massive walls pointed spires, elegant balconies, hovering misery. Sun and dirt, sparkling white cement, grottoes muddy from the last flood. Endless variety of the ghats. Century of India.

At first I stayed in the guest house at Banaras University. It had huge wide lawns with the buildings set far back. Then I found a small room in a hotel on the second floor. It was of cement as they all are, and had a bed and table. Green wooden doors swung open like wooden shutters and were bolted from the inside. There was a padlock for the outside when you left. It was always a trick to get both sides to swing shut together so that they closed. It had no windows. There was a light bulb on the ceiling. It was abut forty cents a day without meals. There was a dining room downstairs.

Since the Indian rooms are always all cement it is safe to cook in them. I was almost home, but nevertheless I bought a little alcohol burner and set it on the floor and boiled eggs and vegetables in a tin cup. It was quite handy and I could make things I could not otherwise find. Sometimes the alcohol burnt in a little circle on the floor but was harmless. I ate bread, eggs. Potatoes and tomatoes when I could find them. Most meals were cold and it was a luxury to heat up something. I bought big duck eggs too as at school. I also bought the Indian pastries filled with hot curried potatoes. I also bought tea from the hotel and had the luxury of tea and bread in my room every morning. It had a little pitcher of boiled milk and a pot of sugar by the side. The bearer, a little boy, brought it up and it was always a treat.

The bearers were always in the halls, when they weren’t busy collected around the stairs at the end of the hall. The stairways went to the roof and there they sat, talking or poking at each other. They were rather shy and hung back when I was around. One of them was learning English tho and he showed me his book. It was mostly pictures with words underneath. I promised to help them and one day we had an English lesson on the steps. They were quite mannerly but very shy.

It was interesting to watch Banaras from the rooftop at night. If I didn’t go out I could still be part of the night life. People milled about and shuffled along. Cows and people filled the street. Merchants sold in the stalls below. It was fun to watch the people walking about, sitting in the teashops drinking, etc. After dark it was mostly men tho, for them it is a man’s world, tho occasionally a lady would come with the family. Little boys and children ran around tho.

I was not the only one n the rooftops however, and occasionally someone would peer at me across the way. Once I was startled to see a lady walking her dog on the next roof. It was his toilet. Apparently anything goes here.

It was fun to look down from above, and I watched till I grew tired. Banaras stays up late at night and there is always activity. All of the sounds were natural ones; the hoof beat of the horses, the voices, the bare feet and sandals. It was restful and filled one with content.

Another day I wandered along the river. This time I started far south of the main ghats where I usually went The bank was rather deserted but it was still possible to make your way from ghat to ghat along the bank. There was a long stone wall at the water’s edge and I walked along it.

The sun was clear and hot and it was a beautiful day. A little ways along I came across some dhobis standing in the river doing their washing. They seemed to be friends working together and smiled and looked up as I came by. They looked so friendly that I hated to pass by. I couldn’t talk to them except to greet them with namastes, but they seemed pleased and smiled and gestured.

Along the bank their children were playing. There was one small baby in a cradle and I went over to peep at it. It was so tiny. The mother came up and showed him to me. It was partially covered with a sari to keep the flies off. It was so peaceful, bright and sunny that I sat down by the baby. The mother smiled her approval and all seemed to agree. She returned to her work and all laughed happily as I rocked the baby on the bank of the Ganges.

It seemed perfect bliss. With their dhotis bound high around their legs they stood in the water, men and woman alike, at their work. They gathered the wet cloth till it was only three or four feet long and then swung it high, and down on the rocks below. When it hit they gave a grunt. Then they rinsed it and wrung it so tight that it circled around on itself. Evidently the cloth could take this treatment. Then they spread the long cloth on the banks to dry. Here there was grass, but even if there were not they would do the same. I watched some time, hating to leave this peaceful and contented, friendly group. At last I left and they smiled and waved goodbye. How our hearts were tied in speechless love.

As I walked along the river there were three boys playing on the crumbling dirt bank in front of a temple. They ran up and down. Finally one came over to me and spoke some English. I was surprised for he was young and I didn’t expect it here. They asked me to the home of another boy and I followed them up the embankment and down the streets. Finally we came to a large room and he opened the door. Inside were a large cabinet and a table. He introduced me to the mother and she asked me to eat with them. She disappeared into the kitchen and soon came back with some delicious food. After I had eaten I went to the home of the boy who spoke English and stayed there some time.

Banaras at night is fascinating. Along the ghats, along the Ganga, a strange, hushed world of dark looming shapes and forms, and the temples against the sky. It is calm, quiet, a wave lapping at the swaying boats. Three points of light set the distance. The emptiness f the other side of the Ganga has become tangible darkness, flowing on to eternity. The river lows dark and silent into the vast beyond – a dark river beneath a dark sky. It is real, and when you pinch yourself, it is still there. The white cement stretches underneath, and the banks are of crumbling cement and mud. How the ancients enjoyed beauty we never know, with torch and firelight. The magic seems to come again and we are pulled into time century’s age, and these to come, when we dare to know beauty again. No planes broke the stillness, no glaring bulbs the calm beauty.

Rhapsody of the night. You lose all sense of time, carried into space, drifting. Only an occasional sound makes it somewhat real. At the foot of the steps there is something flowing, then only darkness. You fluctuate between here and eternity. Here are the steps and form, reality….there eternity and formless, undifferentiated space, vast dark nebulous distance. Lost in space. Only the cement assures one they are on this side of eternity. Then you float away in space. Only the stone temples anchor the vast beyond, but even they, towering with their vast weight press down, slip down the steps into the river and flow away into the dark night and vast eternity of space. The submerged temple takes on a new and dramatic meaning.

To sit forever on the bank of the Ganga and flow into the night, into eternity. To slip into time, carried away into centuries past and those to come – lost in eternity. To watch forever the flowing of the night into darkness.

Here is heaven and earth, for you cannot get closer to earth than India, nor to heaven and eternity. In running we lose time; in stillness it stays forever. In the bliss and eternity of this night, time stands still.

A shaggy head appears in a temple door flooded with light. The hand raises a burning torch into the night, for the light to travel into eternity. Thus was Banares.

On to XI - Final Impressions