I Left My Heart In Varanasi

OK, so, remember that time I was in Goa and I was all like, "well, guys, I don't think I'm ever coming home..."? Well this time it's for REAL. I mean, I obviously will be coming back as planned, having as I do a flight lined up, a job to go back to (yeehaw! thank you WGA!), a limited amount of money, a visa that will eventually expire, etc.

But I really and truly have fallen in love with Banaras. As of right now, if someone walked up to me and offered to pay me a living wage and sponsor a work visa for me to stay here and do something interesting, I would jump at the chance. I do not want to leave here. A tiny part of me has even considered canceling all my further train tickets, moving to a cheaper guesthouse, and spending the rest of the trip in Banaras. Only the headache of getting refunds on my 5 or 6 remaining tickets (or losing a big chunk of change) is preventing it.

I want to write everything I think about Varanasi, but I can't put much of it into words. I can't even tell you why I'm so charmed by it. I'll admit that one aspect is spiritual. Not so much that I've decided I want to be Hindu (not that I could unless it was some offshoot designed for outsiders, like Osho or the Hare Krishnas). It's similar to the way I've felt in certain parts of Rome. I don't want to be Catholic, but there's a presence, a stillness, which tells me god is there. Except with Varanasi it's the opposite, the presence is movement, life. Which jibes much more with my own personal beliefs, which may explain why I'm so drawn to this place. It's New Orleans, if New Orleans was a few milennia older and the center of one of the world's oldest religions. This is about as close as I get to the sort of religious experience I promised I was not going to India in search of.

There's also my history buff side, which likes Banaras because it just feels so damn old. Of course, structurally, the city is younger than most other "old" cities, because it's been rebuilt so many times. It's more about the layout of the streets, the sounds, the smells, the people, the animals, etc. Walking the streets makes me wonder if this is what medieval Europe felt like, or Jerusalem at the time of Christ.

Most of the streets are narrow alleyways about the size of the hallway of a Lower East Side tenement, packed with tiny shops which mainly sell religious items, when they don't sell silk or much more mundane things like tea in disposable terracotta cups, paan, or sweets. Most streets have open sewers on each side, though it's no more disgusting than the gutters of Bourbon Street on a Saturday night, when you think about it. There's very little vehicular traffic; instead the streets are crowded with a parade of pilgrims, cows, running children, hawkers and touts, holy men, and beggars. The whole scene is lit by whatever sunlight can penetrate the tall buildings and narrow alleys during the day, and the fires under pots of boiling tea and pans of boiling jalebis at night. Wherever you are in the old city you can hear hymns being sung, conch shell horns and bells, goats bleating, cows lowing, and the chanting of a thousand mantras. In the midst of all this, little boys fly kites, mothers nurse babies, young couples grin conspiratorially, and everyone talks on cell phones. Even the gurus.

It shocks me that, in another month, I'll be back at my desk in Chelsea, staring at a computer screen all day and bickering about whether to order Thai or sushi for lunch. I have to come back here.