Varanasi

We watched it roll out of the fire. Bumping its way through the flames to crash land on dry sand. It made a sound like falling clay, some old flowerpot cracking on upturned soil.

‘It’s a head. It’s definitely a head.’
‘It’s not a head.’
‘It is.’
‘It can’t be, there’s no eyes. Look. There’s no eye sockets either.’
‘But that’s a nose. See? And there, that’s a mouth.’
‘Hhhmmm…’
‘Seriously. Imagine it with hair. Can you see it? Look at the forehead.’
‘Maybe. I suppose. Oh fuck look, there, an opening, at the base of the neck.’
‘Oh man. What is… oh that’s not good, that’s not good at all.’
‘Fuck me that’s nasty.
‘I did not need to see that.’
‘Yep. It’s a head.’
‘It’s a head.’
‘OK. Fine. Lets get some more chai.’

Varanasi. Benares. Kashi. One of the world’s oldest living cities on the banks of the Ganges, covered in heroin and cow shit. It’s like being in Hades when the carnival’s in town.

Most people come to Varanasi to burn, or to watch as the charred torsos of their friends and loved ones are stoked back into the flames. We were at Manikarnika Ghat, the main ‘burning ghat’ in the old city, watching 12 funeral pyres and trying to smoke without inhaling.

The funeral pyres are the main event in Varanasi, for both tourist and participant, and so popular are cremations here that bodies burn 24 hours a day. Thousands of people also come to bathe in the river, pay puja, wash clothes and occasionally buffalo, reflecting both life and death on the surface of the same murky water. The Ganges. Spiritual, slow, and so polluted in Varanasi it’s officially septic.

I’m staying in at the guesthouse today to fight monkeys. Varanasi’s full of them, and small armies parade the ledges, rooftops and every corner of crumbling brick. They steal everything, and I can’t help but picture them in old cloth caps, ragged shorts and torn jackets. One day I’ll see them all singing in chorus about selling roses or picking pockets, I swear it happens somewhere around here.

On my first day in Varanasi I woke up to find a 3ft monkey sitting at the foot of my bed stealing biscuits. I shrieked, he shrieked back, and when I stood up he ran and sat on the wall outside my door, chewing slowly. For three days now I’ve been under siege in sporadic West Side Story style attacks, and this morning I made my stand with who I guess was the leader, a thick set bully with scars down his face.

I stood as tall as I could, made aggressive grunting noises and I stamped my feet, picturing myself ripping his throat out. The bluff worked, he actually flinched, and then barred his teeth and backed away. I think precedence has been now set, I’m a much bigger monkey. With much stronger arms and a metal stick I can grip between opposable thumbs.

My guesthouse is on Kedar Ghat, in the quieter south side of the old city, and from my doorway I can sit and watch the Ganges curving like a slow, fat snake. Pointing its fangs northeast so it can lick the side of the sunset.

Directly opposite my room, on the other side of the river, is a horizon of brilliant white sand. Submerged as the riverbed during high tide and monsoon, it’s a faceless shadow of Varanasi’s overcrowded ruins and high sandstone walls. It’s empty, beautiful and foreboding, and its contrast defines the city.

The Hindus believe Varanasi is a cross over point, a portal, a gateway between worlds, and there is an established sense of transience here. Like in a waiting room, only one where you’d be sitting patiently between Elvis and Hitler.

Varanasi survives through an ‘off with her head’ sense of humour, that unpredictable blend frivolity and menace. Like a dark fantasy film that that still gets a PG rating. I’m half expecting to end up in a knife fight over precious, or to turn round a corner and be presented by 100 identical wicker laundry baskets, one of which may or may not contain a kidnapped Karen Allen.

Dark eyes surround you without asking here. The small cobbled streets are a permanent distraction, full of melodramas, mischief and the acrid smell of opiates. I should feel fear, I should be afraid of the dark rags hiding in the corner, but I’m not. It’s too ghoulish to be scary, too fantastic to be any real threat. It’s as terrifying and tame as the perfect Halloween.

The sun is giving up for the day and so are the monkeys. I am too, it’s time for food and the comforts of the evening. Varanasi’s a fearsome yet inspiring place, its only betrayal is the river and the damage done.

Bill Hicks once described the human race as ‘a virus with shoes’, but underneath the vile and putrid surfaces of both our own nature and the nature we’ve polluted, there’s still beauty. The face of god is hiding there somewhere, you’ve just got to see it.

Even in Varanasi there’s still three times a day when the Ganga isn’t visibly swimming in shit. Dawn, dusk and when electricity abandons the city. All you can see then is fire.