Now that I am not in India, -more than a month has passed since our return- I think that contrary to what said during the trip, I would return to Varanasi in a blink of an eye.
Varanasi is dirty. There is no way to put it differently; It's dirty in a horrible way. There is shit, literally shit, everywhere. The cows eat garbage and the hungry dogs fight with them for pieces of paper that once had little piles of chicken tika masala in their entrails: but they do so with respect, cautiously. even they know of its sacred condition.
The city, which normally has more than a million inhabitants, is full of foreigners. Men and women who come to the banks of the Ganges River trying to decipher the fascination that this pile of brown waters, full of excrement and toxic waste, manages to exert on a population of more than one billion people.
Every night at sunset, there is a ceremony to honor the river in which it is thanked for the mere fact of existing. It is a moment full of unique energy, mantras, flowers, orange and many, many people. Five priests stand on dais and their fluid movements that include throwing flower petals, beating the air with long-haired whips, while holding an oil lamp in their free hand, honor the great mother Ganga populated by small boats full of of people. The atmosphere is packed with incense, cow dung, leftover food in different states of decomposition and I, am absolutely enthralled, watching every movement through the lens of my camera while trying to remain calm in the face of the avalanche of sensations that flood my prejudiced intelligence.
The next day we took back the same rickshaw that drove us the night before. It's cold and when we get to the ghats we have to deal with the different sellers of necklaces, postcards and trinkets. It is extremely difficult to handle the vendors and the beggars who persecute you, with an admirable determination. Our pockets were repeatedly emptied. We got into the habit of giving the kids the apples that the management left in our room along with nuts, and their smiles of thanks never ceased to amaze me. I discovered that the Indians are not envious, they try to do the best they can with the luck that destiny has in store for them because if they do things well in this life, in the next they will probably reincarnate in a better caste, in a family with more resources. , have a protective roof that covers them, and maybe more than one cow to milk. They really believe in that and seeing that sincerity in their looks, in their attitudes, makes one forget the misery that the country is going through and oh those big, almond-shaped eyes that make contact with you without any shyness, melt all your resistance and fears.
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