Fractal Reflections

Hmmm, it is getting harder and harder to keep track of the date and the day... it's Saturday evening and I just discovered that yesterday was Friday the 13th. Some part of my brain must have known... recently I was wondering when the next Friday the 13th was coming... then I thought it was a really random thought to be having.

So, keeping the blog up to date is becoming increasingly difficult. Sorry about that. I have lots of blog posts bouncing around in my head at the moment, but those seem to be stuck unwritten (at this rate I will have entire tomes of blog posts in the Unseen University's library). This one is entirely un-premeditated but has the distinct honor of being, well, written and posted!

We have made it to Varanasi, after a whirlwind of camel treks and forts and crazy colors in Rajasthan. Varanasi, formerly known as Benares (and on some signs I saw today, still called "Banarasi"). We nearly fell in to the Ganges on arrival. (Ganges: pronounced something like /gunguh/ with hard g's). It is big and green and so polluted and holy and the banks are full of life and death and every little detail in between. Our guest house is right Manikarnika Ghat, the main burning ghat (ghats are big cement steps on the banks of a river). Yep, a burning ghat, as in cremation. A dip in the Ganges is supposed to wipe away your sins and dying here is quite auspicious. To that end, Manikarnika Ghat is filled with giant piles of wood and pan-balance scales (like massive scales of justice) to weigh it.

When we arrived, I was exhausted from an overnight train trip (and because I am generally exhausted lately). That afternoon I fell asleep watching the animated Hanuman film, which fetures lots of chanting of "Ram Ram" and "Jai Sri Ram" (as Hanuman, the monkey, is devoted to Ram, an incarnation of Vishnu). In my delirious sleep, I thought to myself, "this city is vibrating with the name Ram...." Later I came to enough to realize that it was real people chanting "Ram Ram satyaha" over and over as they processed under our window. That's the chant of the funeral processions, carrying the body on a garlanded stretcher, as they wind through the tiny alleys of the old city to the river.

It would be pretty easy to get lost here. Fortunately you can always find your way to the Ganges, the goddess of Varanasi, and follow her home, except during the monsoons when her waters climb too high and cover the ghats-- but then again, maybe not anymore... we had lunch today at the "Hotel River View", a family run guesthouse with a "Family Restaurant" (that's literally the name). We sat at one of the two plastic tables with a plastic tablecloth but huge windows that opened onto the river. The proprietor was telling me about the dam built up north on the Ganges. He was pretty angry about it and the effects it has had on the water levels of this sacred body of water. Of course, Varanasi still has daily power outages (and a serious sewage problem).

Oh, right... fractals. Sometimes writing about India feels like trying to put a fractal in to words. Every experience contains the whole, over and over again. As Martin said one day, "I don't write much on my blog because even trying to write one sentence, it breaks apart and branches in ten directions and it just gets too complicated." Every thing is so tied up and connected to every other thing. And little details, tiny discoveries that give me great joy: they are just too complicated with all the background... they either don't make sense or sound totally weird. I'm off to the ghats for sunset.