Varanasi the washout

Not for us the guidebook promised experience of the great Hindu city of Varanasi stretching itself along the banks of the Ganges. Varanasi, Kashi to the devout – the Luminous, City of Light – founded by Shiva, one of the oldest living cities in the world, a centre of spiritual life since before the sixth century BC, built at one of the holiest of all Ganges tirthas, crossing places, where the divine is in earth, water and fire, where the devout come daily to the many stepped ghats for their ablutions in the holy Ganges, where the dead are brought on their continuing passage through deathlifedeath, where the elderly come to await death and the promise of enlightenment. 

Not for us this Varanasi. 

Instead days of heavy rains, at times torrential. The holy Ganges, surging down the Himalayas and across the plains, is up a dangerous 30 feet, lapping at the upper steps and edges of temples, flowing across doorsteps, the rushing currents sweeping garbage, bodies and Himalayan silt towards Kolkata, the streets one morning knee and waist deep in muck, reports of 24 lives lost, rickshaws and tuktuks abandoned in unseen potholes, the holy ghats grey, dripping and forlorn, the fires smoldering ash. Indra, King of the Gods, Lord of Heaven, God of War, Storms and Rainfall is having his way with Varanasi.

Yesterday we attempted to walk on higher land through mazy laneways, their crannies still so full of activity. Men stitch sequins and tiny beads on saris, the chuffing of a small flour mill, a bicycle repair operation scattered along the lane stones, the part skeleton of one ancient bike upsidedown, the parts of others set out nearby. Cows and bulls wander these same narrow lanes (and the congested main Varanasi streets), their wet brown droppings and pools of piss everywhere. Men pee against walls and into gullies, urchins run in play through damp slippery alleys. 
 

Immediately the waters subside, the streets are immediately crammed with vegetable sellers catching up from the flood, their wheeled carts piled with cucumbers, garlics, peppers, chillies, tomatoes, oranges, apples. Men pull rickshaws free of the muck. Cows again mosey around the street corners, grazing amongst vegetable waste and plastic chai cups.