Down By The River

Spiritual cleansing of the senses seldom come better than on the banks of the Ganges, meditates Erik Fearn

Being rowed through the pastel colours of dawn on the Ganges, the sweet smell of incense suddenfly mingles with something just as sweet, but somehow different. Rama, my rowing guide, brings us around the corner of a pale-yellow ghat, and there it is: The Ghat of the Dead.

This is where all of the subcontinent’s devout Hindus wish to be cremated. To die in Varanasi and have your ashes strew on the old and slow moving Ganges is an auspicious last rite that will make the passing into the next life a good one.

“Prayer is not asking. It is the longing of the soul.” Gandhi

In this age of jammed photocopiers, jammed traffic, and generally jammed lives, I need some spiritual peace and quiet something we often yearn for but rarely achieve. As a child reading Kipling’s and Twain’s spellbinding accounts of this magical city, I had always fancied finding my way there, somehow, on life’s meandering course. Now that I am here, will I find what I am looking for?

Varanasi, or Benares in Hindi, was a nondescript fishing village in northern India before Buddha came to a nearby temple as Lord Siddharta and gave blessings to the people and the river that gave them life so many centuries ago. Buddhism has long since given way to Hinduism in these parts, but the lingering auspiciousness has only intensified.

Today, Varanasi away from the river remains nondescript, even in its modern form. Slums, decrepit colonial homes, factories, a huge university, dirt and bettlenut-spit mingle to unimpress.

But Hindu devotees and devoted travellers alike know to ignore much of the city itself as it is the many individually named ghats that are the true lure. These steep, crumbling, uneven steps are each a platform for Hindu pilgrims to intensely utter their prayers. All the ghats lead down to the same source and effluence of life - the Holy River Ganges.

Despite having become horribly polluted over the last few yers from raw sewage, cremated (or partially cremated) bodies, and dangerous pesticides run-offs from upstream, the Ganges still holds the power to cleanse souls.

“I want nothing to do with a religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth and ignorance.” Nehru

My first impression of this spiritual vortex is a distinctly ugly one (however, it seems that the closer you get into the heart of the city, the more the city gets into your heart, blinding you its mange) I have just arrived on the night train from Agra (Taj Mahal), and as I am buffeted out of the dingy station by a sea of shouting and waving rickshaw rivers, I came across a huge billboard advertising toothpaste.

A wholesome, happy Indian family (two boys, one girl) grin out at the stench and poverty around them. And there, on the crumbling sidewalk at the foot of the billboard is a (the?) ragged family sprawled out in a malnourished stupor.