Drinking a mango-coconut Lassi at Blue Lassi Shop, the last stop on our food tour, I feel very at peace. Its a little after 7pm and dark, the air is saturated with water and I’m still sweating from every pour in my body. But I’m sitting, there’s a fan above me, and I have a direct view of the narrow street in front of me. Sipping on the yogurt drink a solo Indian woman in a bright green and pink saree sits next to me and we exchange brief hellos. I’m curious about her because nearly everywhere I have been in Varanasi there has not been a single Indian woman in the space more or less a group of them - even though I do see them on the street. Where do all the Indian women go, I wonder to myself all the time. What is her story? Is a funeral of her loved one taking place at the river below? Women are not allowed to be at the funeral or the cremation site because “no crying or sadness is allowed” I am told by my guide earlier in the week. Maybe that’s her story, maybe it isn’t. I’ll never know because I didn’t know how to ask.
The Lassi Shop worker is sitting in the open air window reading a newspaper seemingly oblivious to the world around him. My guide is sitting in the corner playing a video game on his phone since he’s fasting on Mondays this month for the festival of Lord Shiva. He’s been a trooper putting up with me the past several days as I have asked many many questions. He’s only 22 and has a keen eye for fashion and is especially proud of his ray-bans. He wants to open a school for underprivileged kids when he saves enough money or maybe a street food restaurant safe for foreigners on the Assi Ghat. We both notice the same bizarre things on the street and then notice each other noticing the same thing so its been an unusual but fun bond. I personally find this validating because if I can notice what the Indians also think is bizarre, but other westerns don’t catch it, it must mean I have to some degree assimilated a little to being here. Or at least I like to flatter myself and think so.
I notice what appears to be either mug shots or old passport photos all over the sitting area of Blue Lassi and I’m wondering how in the world they have the acquired so many of the same kind of photo from so many different western people. My guide notices me noticing and says “Oh those are the pictures of the people who do not pay.” We both laugh, but he tells me I can leave a picture too if I want and goes back to playing his video game.
I don’t know which happened first if I saw it or I heard it, but retrospectively I think I must have heard it first but did not register in my brain what it meant until I saw it. It started with a bell - like most things related to Hindu spirituality and then some chanting. The next thing I know I am seeing men carrying a horizontal bamboo ladder topped with saffron scarfs and marigold and various flower garlands. Then I see it, the outline of a head and the nose under the scarf, a body has just passed the Lassi Shop on the way to a funeral and then cremation at the Ganges River. A procession of about 6 men related to the body follows and after that, honest to god, a cow as if it wanted to be part of the ritual too.
I am completely floored by this. Even though I have been to the cremation sites and felt the heat of a fire at a cremation on my skin and have learned about the rituals and logically have some kind of understanding about them, the intensity of it is still so new and unexpectedly surprising for me. Like logically in my head I knew that they carried the body through the city to the river. I had seen them do this from the river... but up until that point I had not seen it happen in the city proper itself. I look around the Lassi Shop, the worker is still reading his newspaper and didn’t even look up even though the body literally passed in front of him in less than 3 feet, my guide is still playing his video game, the woman continued staring out the window as if nothing happened, and my travel partner completely missed it (first access to WiFi in a while). How can everyone here be so incredibly causal about death I find myself thinking? The reality is actually the opposite I would argue, everyone here is deeply connected with realty of death and the rebirth of life. It is a mind blowing thing for a Westerner to wrap their head around - I’m still working it out in my head.
I keep sipping my Lassi. By the time I finish, I have seen 4 bodies on their way to the Ganges to be reborn. The first one was medium sized, the second was large, the third was really really small but I don’t think it was a child, and the fourth medium. How weird is it that after someone is dead and gone we still have the body, the most physical form of a person left, and just from that, the physical outline of their body wrapped in saffron, on some level represents to a degree how they lived? Its a weird thought - I don’t know a thing about any of those people, but I could see the outline of the body and it seemed to say so much for so little.
The Lassi Shop worker is sitting in the open air window reading a newspaper seemingly oblivious to the world around him. My guide is sitting in the corner playing a video game on his phone since he’s fasting on Mondays this month for the festival of Lord Shiva. He’s been a trooper putting up with me the past several days as I have asked many many questions. He’s only 22 and has a keen eye for fashion and is especially proud of his ray-bans. He wants to open a school for underprivileged kids when he saves enough money or maybe a street food restaurant safe for foreigners on the Assi Ghat. We both notice the same bizarre things on the street and then notice each other noticing the same thing so its been an unusual but fun bond. I personally find this validating because if I can notice what the Indians also think is bizarre, but other westerns don’t catch it, it must mean I have to some degree assimilated a little to being here. Or at least I like to flatter myself and think so.
I notice what appears to be either mug shots or old passport photos all over the sitting area of Blue Lassi and I’m wondering how in the world they have the acquired so many of the same kind of photo from so many different western people. My guide notices me noticing and says “Oh those are the pictures of the people who do not pay.” We both laugh, but he tells me I can leave a picture too if I want and goes back to playing his video game.
I don’t know which happened first if I saw it or I heard it, but retrospectively I think I must have heard it first but did not register in my brain what it meant until I saw it. It started with a bell - like most things related to Hindu spirituality and then some chanting. The next thing I know I am seeing men carrying a horizontal bamboo ladder topped with saffron scarfs and marigold and various flower garlands. Then I see it, the outline of a head and the nose under the scarf, a body has just passed the Lassi Shop on the way to a funeral and then cremation at the Ganges River. A procession of about 6 men related to the body follows and after that, honest to god, a cow as if it wanted to be part of the ritual too.
I am completely floored by this. Even though I have been to the cremation sites and felt the heat of a fire at a cremation on my skin and have learned about the rituals and logically have some kind of understanding about them, the intensity of it is still so new and unexpectedly surprising for me. Like logically in my head I knew that they carried the body through the city to the river. I had seen them do this from the river... but up until that point I had not seen it happen in the city proper itself. I look around the Lassi Shop, the worker is still reading his newspaper and didn’t even look up even though the body literally passed in front of him in less than 3 feet, my guide is still playing his video game, the woman continued staring out the window as if nothing happened, and my travel partner completely missed it (first access to WiFi in a while). How can everyone here be so incredibly causal about death I find myself thinking? The reality is actually the opposite I would argue, everyone here is deeply connected with realty of death and the rebirth of life. It is a mind blowing thing for a Westerner to wrap their head around - I’m still working it out in my head.
I keep sipping my Lassi. By the time I finish, I have seen 4 bodies on their way to the Ganges to be reborn. The first one was medium sized, the second was large, the third was really really small but I don’t think it was a child, and the fourth medium. How weird is it that after someone is dead and gone we still have the body, the most physical form of a person left, and just from that, the physical outline of their body wrapped in saffron, on some level represents to a degree how they lived? Its a weird thought - I don’t know a thing about any of those people, but I could see the outline of the body and it seemed to say so much for so little.
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