Ghatnapping in Benares 2

                               “Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the
                                 primary business of Varanasi.”
                                                                         Tahir Shah, Sorcerer's Apprentice



“Baksheesh.” Whispered the captain.
I told him that the last thing I felt like, among the ignoble beggars and emaciated cows and stench of shit and urine and shit and sick bodies and shit and burning bodies and shit and smoke and shit and incense, was leaving a tip. Head bobble.
Extricated from the ooze, we climbed back up the ghat steps, into the maze of grime at the top. My eyes fell on an ancient dragon with crazed eyes, talking to herself in Hindi, and pulling a cat behind her. It was upside down and stiff, paws in the air. She had dragged it for so long, there was no longer any fur on its back.
“Hey, lady.” I said. “I think your cat’s dead.” She didn’t stop. We followed the cat down the street to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. A ton of gold had been used to construct its fifty-foot high spire three hundred years earlier, and Hindus from all over India tried to visit, at least once in their lifetime, on their path to moksha liberation. They seemed to have all arrived at the very moment we did, and our own liberation couldn’t come fast enough.
The next temple had been built in 1964. A rich industrialist’s white marble commemoration of Lord Rama, the Tulsi Manas was either a tasteless monstrous monument or a monumental monstrosity.
But the action all occurred next door, in the multi-tiered red-stained ochre Durga Monkey Temple. I was just over three months down the road from the Munich monkey massacre, and my left leg began to throb strangely, on the black and white checkerboard dais inside the gold pillars. I looked down to see a baby rhesus monkey, hanging off the book in my hand. I looked down further to see his mother macaque wrap her arms around my leg, and then, in slow motion, tilt her head to the side, bare a set of razor canines larger than should have fit in her mouth, and plant them bone deep into my calf. The red-staining flowed to the checkerboard.
We navigated the swimming pool size marble relief map of India at the Bharat Mata Temple, fascinated by how high the sheer wall of the Himalaya shot into the air above the plains below. This is where we were heading, if I survived my primate punctures.
Inside the industrialist Birla family’s New Vishwanath Temple was a Disney animatronic swami singing mantras and turning the pages of his book. On the way back to the Tourist Buglaow for a ghatnap, we migrated through a ‘just for looking’ emporium and the Bharat Kala Bavan museum, for its old playing cards, Moghul miniature paintings and meager collection of modern art.
The small bus that waited for us outside was already a near riot when we emerged from our refuge mid-afternoon. The thirty tourists competing for seats were mostly rude Indians. Robyn had to sit in my lap, beside the two French and an Argentinian on the floor beside us.
We were headed to Sarnath, the deer park where Buddha first taught the Dharma, innate laws that determined the necessary decent behavior to maintain the natural order of things. Those living in accordance with dharma would proceed more quickly toward justice, social harmony and human happiness and personal liberation.
When he traveled to Sarnath, Buddha had to traverse the Ganges. Having no money with which to pay the ferryman, he crossed through the air. When King Bimbisāra heard of this, he abolished the toll for ascetics. We only got halfway to dharma before our own natural order went to deershit. The money collector with the bad teeth, climbing over seats and under appendages, held out his hand to Robyn.
By this time she was more interested in personal liberation than social harmony. She refused to pay. The news, spreading forward at the speed of sound, stopped the bus on a rupee, throwing all the human happiness through the air. The justice landed on the head of the money collector, who said he was not responsible, a concept with which everyone agreed. Destiny was recognized as an ascetic, granted a free ride, and we all continued on our way to Sarnath. Here, our trio walked around the Great Stupa, before returning to the natural order of things.
Robyn played with the deer in the park, Julie bargained for a photo of a local woman, laden with a grass burden, and I sought out the remains of the Lion Capital from the most famous of Ashoka’s pillars. Only nineteen of these columns survive, each carved out of a single stone. Fifty feet high and as many tons in weight, some were dragged hundreds of miles, to commemorate the edicts of the 3rd century BC Mauryan king. The one at Sarnath, with the four lion capital, with its chakra cartwheel, was adopted as the national emblem of India. In the early years of his reign, Ashoka was a tyrant, He had killed a hundred thousand people and deported a lakh and a half more. After his remorseful conversion to Buddhism, he erected his pillars, and eighty-four thousand stupas, with interior walls in the shape of a swastika, a lucky charm representing the cosmic dance around a fixed centre, guarding against evil. Twenty-two centuries later, it was adopted as a symbol by another tyrant, and the dancers let their guard down.
We squeezed Limcas into our bus for the long drive to the sandstone cream of Ramnagar Fort, and the Maharaja of Benares’ collection of weapons, robes, ivory carved paper thin in various ornaments, and a mind blowing coach made of the same material.
Through the ubiquitous bat droppings, we dropped down the ghat to the Ganges, just before sunset. I sat in front of a funerary barge and looked to reflect on what the four hundred million people living along this river took out of her, compared to what they put in. There was no reflection. In a smothering dusk, Robbie rocked uncomfortably on my knee, all the way back to the bungalow.
The next morning would separate me from my Destiny. She had developed diarrhea overnight. Her color alternated from white to green, depending on the light. Robyn had been subsisting on a creation she called a ‘chip butty’ which, at Lords Restaurant, next door to the bungalow, consisted of white bread filled with French fries. I had first learned of the animal from Yorkshire Dave, who sang his footie theme song about it, while the rain spider had been crawling up his leg:

                                       “You fill up my senses
                                         Like a gallon of Maggots
                                         Like a packet of Woodbines
                                         Like a good pinch of snuff
                                         Like a night out in Sheffield
                                         Like a greasy chip butty
                                         Like Sheffield United
                                         Come fill me again...”

It was no salvation. The dehydration took the legs out from under her, in the morning muggy. She fainted so hard, I heard the floor connection across the bungalow foyer. I left her to recover, wading out through the mud and cow shit to buy a third class ticket on the Doon Express to Gaya. From my later experience with the transport, it had been deliberately misspelled.
We had planned on separate paths at this stage in our journeys. Robyn and Julie had no interest in visiting the place of Buddha’s enlightenment. They had India Fatigue, and wanted out. Nepal offered the promise of soft beds and solid stools and the cool mountain air of Katmandu. Lemon meringue pie already danced on their tongues.
Shiva stilled danced on mine, and the plan was that I would meet up with them in Kat, after I had found my enlightenment in Bodhgaya. My determination not to go with them to Nepal would prove to be a clear sign that it was missing.
By mid-afternoon Robyn was feeling well enough to join Julie, and accompany me to the Cantonment Railway Station. It was a carnival of chaos.
Twenty-three years after we drank chai here, a terrorist Moslem group, named Lashkar-e-Kahab, would detonate an explosive device at the entrance to platform one. I’m not sure how you would have known. Empty rust-bucket carriages were connected by clotheslines and drying laundry, across platforms, to mirror image cars, sidetracked on adjacent railway sidings. Bands of thieving monkeys roamed the crosswalks, looking for victims. A Braham bull climbed the stairs on track number five. Robyn brushed out a space near the white painted brick toilet with a panni broom. Workers peeled potatoes on the floor beside us. A bovine beast with wool pom-poms on its horns began eating the peelings. I put my hand on his head, and before I went over to kiss Robyn goodbye, and bid farewell to Varansi.
“Have a nice day, cow.” I said.