Down By The River

An absurdly early start this morning, as I’ve been told that one of the truly essential things to do when visiting Varanasi is see dawn from a boat on the Ganges, or Ganga as it is known here. The Ganges is a holy river for Hindus, and is used as a sort of shorthand for power and greatness. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says of himself “I am the shark among the fishes, and the Ganges among the rivers.” Nowadays, Hindus come here for two reasons: to wash their sins away, and to die.

Well before sunrise those who come to wash their sins away were gathered along the Ghats, the steps which line the river, leading conveniently down into the water. Above the Ghats, palaces and temples belonging to assorted strands of Indian royalty stand in varying states of disrepair. Of course, those washing themselves are not necessarily here for religious reasons, it is also the only bathing option available to many, although I have to admit I declined to wash in the water myself. Holy or not, the Ganges was the birthplace of cholera and remains pretty unpleasant – at one point we pass two huge pillars, painted pink and decorated with religious icons. At first glance you might miss the fact that these are actually there to pump sewage into the drink.

Those who come to die in this city come eventually to the Manikarnika Ghat. It is perhaps the most famous of the Shamshan Ghats, where bodies are cremated and their ashes are washed away by the river. The shore is piled high with wood to feed the fires which burn constantly, and it costs thousands of rupees for the privilege of being cremated here – a price worth paying for those who believe that dying in Varanasi and being burnt on the river will release their soul from the cycle of transmigration.

Dawn on the Ganges also attracts another group of people: tourists, like myself – and where there are tourists there are business opportunities to be had. I spotted the boat pictured above cruising alongside the boats of wealthy looking foreigners (they kept well clear of me). They were selling DVDs and CDs, and you can see their television set on the right of the picture, where it was nosily playing music videos. It made for an incongruous site – the awed tourists attempting to take in a foreign tradition while the locals drew alongside like pirates to sell them imported digital ephemera. I have no idea how they were powering the screen on their tiny vessel, but by that strange magic of the television set, the fact that it was on meant the tourists found themselves powerless not to watch.

After that early start, it was an abrupt return from my sojourn into tourism and back into meetings with academics from the several Varanasi universities and journalists from a range of local and national press organisations, including the Times of India and the Hindustan Times to try and put the conversations I've had with weavers and traders in a wider context, and hopefully establish whether or not the entire handloom industry has, like those DVDs, been sold down the river.