Day One in Varanasi

 I am in Varanasi and it is morning time. The sound of chinking bells is issuing from a temple tucked into an alley wall nearby. The alleys here remind me somewhat of Venice. It could be an alliterative association, both cities beginning with a 'V.'  I somehow found a beautiful hostel for 250 rupees a night, with breakfast and lunch included! It is 42 degrees C and there is no air-conditioning, but I don't mind sweating. I just hang my sheets up to dry when I go out during the day.

The place is exactly the kind of place I could write a novel. The house is old, but well-kept, with a winding staircase and dark wooden furniture. The lights are yellow and dim. I feel as though I have stepped back in time. The women in the kitchen taught me how to make roti puff up over the flame yesterday and hugged me when I tried to do my dishes, pushing me playfully away from the sink. They call me "didi" which I think is a kind of endearment. They do not speak English, but we smile constantly at each other and mime things.

I arrived yesterday at around noon and vowed to myself that I would wait until it cooled down to take a boat ride to the burning ghats, but of course as soon as I walked down to the river, I was convinced by a boatman to go out for an hour. The heat was intense, but the price was ridiculously cheap because no other customer would be stupid enough to go out midday. What a sight though to see so many burning bodies! To see water buffalo churning around in the green water, to see men diving to the river floor and sifting through handfuls of pebbles for gold, silver, and coins that had been given to the river by devotees, storing their finds in their mouth (I at first wrongly attributed the bulges in their cheeks to swelling). These men were devotees too I suppose, but that didn't stop them from looting the offerings. Some men sat on the stairs and rolled chapati to feed to the river. Others drank directly from it, a kind of ritual wash, drink, wash, drink, spit, wash, drink. My boat-man asked if I wished to 'shower' in it. I declined, but I don't know how long I can last without a swim. I am tempted.

 I started Passage to India last night again. I forgot what a beautiful book it is. Reading it is so much more vivid here. The first page describes a town along the Ganges and, sitting in the rooftop library overlooking the oldest part of the city, I felt like I was reading an exact description of my surroundings. Kites dipped and swayed in the orange sky. I watched monkeys climb along the rooftops with their babies clutching their stomachs. Each time they leaped to the next building, the mother would hold her baby with one arm as a precaution. It reminded me of how mum and dad would automatically reach across to shield us when breaking quickly in the car. Monkeys fascinate me in their likeness to humans, to me. Does that make it an essentially narcissistic fascination?

I can't quite describe how at home I feel here, no restlessness, no need to see anything else really. Maybe it is the heat that is just stupefying me into a sense of unshakeable calm. No, it is much more than that. I wish I could just sit in the library on the roof next to the fan and read and write forever. Hopefully after six days I will be ready to move on. If not, it is always nice to leave a place with tears of love in my eyes. Pune never entranced me so totally; I loved it because it had become familiar, not because of its charm. This feels more like love at first sight, the existence of which I, a lover of magic ever since mum taught me to build fairy huts in the mountains when I was small, am always delighted to find proof.

Tinkers

My shoe fell apart yesterday. It was one of the shoes I had bought in Goa, after the tide carried mine away one night, near a shop where the vendor told Mikael and me that the music he was selling was sure to make us say "Ooh la la!". When it fell off my foot it was two in the afternoon and the heat radiated from the ground, the kind of heat that almost feels enough to move beyond sensation, and becomes somehow visible, too hot to go barefoot. I looked around and spotted a man a few steps away sitting in a rectangular metal box-like structure laden with shoes. Amazingly, there always seems to be someone here who can do exactly what you need, jobs broken down into pieces, leaving an array of experts on very specific things that have mostly ceased to be manually done at home. I stopped to sit on his stool and he took my shoe between his crossed legs and inspected it carefully. Sitting in the lotus position, the entirety of his thighs touched the ground and the soles of his feet were visible, resting on his knees. A picture of Shirdi Sai Baba on the blue metal wall opposite. I inspected his workshop. Impeccably tidy, with plastic bags stuffed in the shelves lining the wall, full of bits of things for fixing. Things we might so often throw away. I think I have praised the sweeping away of clutter as minimalism in the past or maybe I called it being unattached to things. But being so sure about the merits of not hoarding, I overlooked something else. How different it is to save things because you recognize their value! There is a shop I have passed twice now on the other side of the river full of collected things, lightbulbs, twine, oddly shaped metal objects (unrecognisable to me, revealing much about my past, void of any kind of 'fixing' or handiness). A broken shoe might stay broken because I would never think to cut up bits of leather from the last. And even if I did, I would never know where to start. This man was so adept. He could fix things so physically. How wonderful! I felt inspired, the way I feel after I hear someone sing beautifully or play the piano, that kind of yearning determination to change, to learn. This salvaging, this recycling reminds me of that book Tinkers about the clock-repairman all told as a memory. Patching, fixing seems to make newness less brutal because it lets the old in when need be, weaving, supportive, it can all get pretty metaphorical. I felt so full of wonder as I watched this man work carefully, each move deliberate, making my shoe whole again, like magic. His shirt was soft and clean looking his hair recently trimmed and my mind 'moved to distant places.' I wondered if his wife handles these things. I tried to imagine. The bags gradually revealed a portion of their contents, some full of scraps and shoelaces, others metal clips, buckles. A tube of glue replaced to its perch after each use, thread, a stapler, a needle he sharpened and bent when he needed it to act as a hook. After he fixed my shoe, the other suddenly felt flimsy, so he reinforced it as well. He noticed the tear in my backpack and silently took in from me and inspected the seam. He took more bags from the shelf and leafed through the contents, taking his time, fastening the bag. His quiet assurance and steady movements entranced me. He passed me my backpack, perfectly mended. My shoes firmly wrapped around my feet once more. I paid him 40 rupees and continued on my way.