Cricket

Exhausted, my attempt to sit down on the train seat failed and instead I performed something closer to a withering slump. Of course I have never been a morning person and it might have been easy to write off my lack of energy to a simple lack of sleep but that would simplify the situation beyond the plausible. The vitality had left my body long before the alarm started its infernal beeping and I would have been just as tired if the sun had woken me instead. Something in the air had been slowly sucking the life from my body each day since we arrived in Varanasi. Resting helped slow the process but even after lying motionless under the ceiling fan the mid-day heat continued to drain me. I would like to blame this creeping lethargy on the sun and its relentless heat that stalked me through the day but that would be a lie. As with most places in the world the sun gives Varanasi a respite for about half of each day. I think instead that the smells and the sounds were responsible for my mind's incoherence. Unlike the heat they never really left. Day and night they stalked and hunted me. Like a wounded prey I never managed to truly relax.

Again the wind spun in a vortex as it slipped over the buildings, through the tangle of alleys, bringing the smoke of the funeral pyres through the window. I got up from the bed to close the windows against the soot. Later I would try to open them in the hope that the wind might have shifted and instead be carrying the smoke out over the river where it belonged. Once I made the mistake of walking onto our balcony. The view had been enticing; a wild string of fires reflected in the perfect black mirror of the Ganges. The moon had risen high in the sky lending a caressing light to the watchers as they said a silent goodbye to their dead. I had thought to share that moment with the night quietly watching from afar. My bare feet sank into months of ash and the open door flooded the room with the hard sounds of metal striking metal as sledge hammers pounded spikes into logs splitting tree trunks into easily burned widths. On the adjacent street a taxi found itself boxed in by a slobbering bovine. The driver thrust his body weight onto the horn and bellowed from the open window in an attempt to free himself and his fare. Instead of moving the cow proved it had plenty of fiber in its diet and added to the odor of ash, sewage and composting garbage. Defeated I walked back into the room and closed the door. Beautiful footprints of ash followed me in and only left off their pursuit when I entered the shower.

Watching the ceiling fan cut its merciful circles I tried to regain the peace I had lost during my attempted voyeurism. The closed door blocked out most of the noise and heavier smells. I might have drifted into my accustomed fitful sleep had a new and furious round of chanting not erupted. I recognized the sounds. Every time a new body arrived at the fires these same chants wafted up to the second story window. This time however, the volume dwarfed all that had come before it. Again I opened the balcony door and this time witnessed a mob of men bellowing their chants. Instead of the normal solemnity they brought with them a palpable anger. Pushing and yelling they carried a litter to the river’s edge. The mob furiously set upon the body with sticks, beating the corpse from all sides as they hurled insults and venom. When the fire arrived the body burst into flames and for the first time I could see that this body had never seen life. Rather, India’s cricket team had lost and the players burned in effigy on the bank of the sacred Ganges.

When I tried to sleep that night I only managed to watch the circles of the fan and wonder at how little of this place I understand.

Photos are up

Look in the "India v2" section for a few current shots of what Suzanne and I have been up to. Most of these pictures were taken in the areas around Hampi and Bedami. The pictures of the people covered in paint are from the Holi festival in Mumbai.

http://photos.yahoo.com/icarusfall

I don't thnk I could do that

Khajuraho is a temple complex in India. It is also a measure of my provincial mind and my inability to envision a world beyond the customary and ordinary. I have always seen sex in much the same way that others around me have see it. Two people (usually from opposite genders) get together for a little fun. They have a few drinks, spend some money on dinner then roll around and grunt a bit. At the end they both make pathetically distorted faces and remark on each others greatness. If they are French then perhaps there is a cigarette at the end, though I believe that this particular denouement has been outlawed in the People’s Republic of Boulder (aka Boulder Colorado, USA.)

And so with my conventional wisdom, inexperience and with my equally unenlightened wife I traveled to the famed city of Khajuraho. The city of Khajuraho would be one iota more lively than a torpid fish left in the desert sun were it not for its ancient Hindu temples. It is to see these temples and more specifically the education they offer that cause tourists to flock to this speck of nothing on the Indian subcontinent. And the education is all about sex: how to do it, what to do it with, and most importantly where to put your head.

I have seen:

It is possible for one man and three women to have sex in the most miraculous of positions. The man stands on his head with his thighs spread 180 degrees apart so that they run parell to the ground. Then with his erection pointing directly toward the sky the first of the three women sits on the platform he has created. Obviously this is an unstable position and without the assistance of the two accompanying women this bizarre structure would come crashing down in a painful interruption to the coitus. The role then of the two assistant women is to hold the legs of the happy couple so that they are able to maintain the difficult balance this position requires. To leave this situation as it is currently described however, would be both sad and unjust to the attending woman. After al,l group sex should make everyone happy. To this end the upside down man standing on his head dexterously uses each of his hands to fondle and massage the two assistants between their legs. Of course this means that all of his weight and his partner's weight (who is sitting between his legs) is now being channeled through the top of his skull and what must be an astoundingly powerful neck. Perhaps the only feat that this man cannot seem to manage is happiness. He appears positively pained.

This then in the great travesty of Khajuraho. One man gifted with both strength and flexibility, and finding himself in an orgy with three stunning women is not able to achieve bliss or even a moderate amount of enjoyment. Is it any wonder that other Khajuraho carvings show men having sex with a small horse? Both the men, there are two of them, look exuberant, though a watching woman holds her hands to her face in horror. I have absolutely no idea what the horse might be thinking.

I have tried to learn from my time here but I simply cannot bring myself to learn what appears to be the obvious lesson, "It is better to have sex with a horse than it is to have an orgy with three voluptuous women each with high round breasts, flawless skin, a firm rump and a seductive gaze. " Looking deeper into the meaning of the carvings there is another possible lesson that I am a little more prepared to accept, "It is better to have sex with a horse than to stand on your head no matter what the enticements might be."

Though I may now be a little wiser from my time in Khajuraho I am still left with the question, "Why was it necessary to build so many temples for such on obscure bit of wisdom?" I can only trust that there is more to this understanding than I have yet uncovered but from now on I will not be standing on my head no matter what kind of enticement Suzanne offers.

Post Script: Suzanne has pointed out that the pained look on the man's face many actually be one of those peculiar faces men make when they are at their happiest. This latest theory may force a re-evaluation of the temples.

See...

The trick is to see without seeing.

We are in Mumbai and this is a startling city for all of the typical reasons: poverty and prosperity, splendor and squalor. Pontificating on these differences is no more interesting and original today than it would have been a hundred years ago. I have seen it before and every two-bit commentator can deride the inequality of it all. What the world needs instead of all this hopeless complaining is some sound advice. How should a fantastically wealthy American travel in a place such as this? (And for the record all Americans are fantastically wealthy.)

On the sidewalk outside, a mere two meters from where I am sitting in air conditioned luxury, a wraith thin man and what might be his son sit propped against the wall. His eyes and cheeks are sunken. Their hunger is no act. The swarm of people outside move around them with the same regard given to the parked cars and sauntering cows. Predictably enough both he and his child were in my way but his legs are thin and they were easy enough to step over. So my first bit of sound advice to a traveler from the land of the corpulent is: Watch your step, don’t trip. The streets have a layer of grime, shit and dust that are best kept on the bottom of your shoes. Landing face first in the muck is not the way to continue on your journey in peace and happiness.

However, this bit of advice sits in square opposition to the next bit of critical wisdom. Don’t look. Everyone sees you coming. You stand out, you can’t help it. No matter how you dress, no matter how long the road has traveled beneath your feet, you still stand out. Neon signs and a twenty piece brass band herald your arrival on every street corner and around every bend. The only bit of camouflage you can hope to cover yourself with is indifference. Hide your caring and your concern. Bury your head in the sand because if the beggar knows you see him, knows you feel just a little of his pain, then with surprising agility and energy he will be on his feet, following your every step, reverently tugging on your arm. Sure, you could give him a few rupees but then another hungry face will be at your side. In a city of sixteen million people and the world’s largest slum, no one has enough rupees.

The sound advice I cannot give is the one morsel of information I have yet to master: How to see without seeing. When I walked in the door here, into the air conditioning, into the information age, I walked over one more beggar and I simultaneously managed the trick. I didn’t trip and I didn’t look. I saw and I didn’t see. But now that I am typing my impressions, now that my guard is down I cannot help but see and the great unanswered question sits right outside the door: What to do?