Varanasi, India - ghats at the Ganges
We took a 5:30 a.m. visit to the ghats, different areas of steps on the banks of the Ganges River, by row boat. On the ghats people are praying, tossing flowers, launching dishes with lit candles, bathing, swimming, washing clothes, drying clothes, selling things and fishing. It is a sea of activity and variety. The colors of the women's saris are dazzling. The complexity of life is expressed at the rivers edge as well as the end of life. At one of the ghats are funeral pyres where bodies wrapped in saris are burned after death. Incredibly, we also saw some of the blind species of freshwater dolphins that manage to survive in the waters of the Ganges.
Hundreds of row boats filled with tourists make the journey along the ghats. The ghats and the tourists are another view for me into the chaos of India. I can only guess that many Indians at the ghats are able to tune out the chaos and focus on their own particular activity, be it praying, washing clothes or smiling at tourists. I am not so fortunate. I keep trying to make some sense, order or meaning out of it and I can't. I am not in awe. I am lost in confusion. I feel like I have flunked the exam at the Ganges River.
Later we visit a Hindu temple and our guide explained some of the Hindu gods to us. The main one, that includes all the others, is OM. This is the name they used for the administrative password for my computer when they installed the English version of Windows on my PC. Now I know why. This is kind of like the "three in one God" of Christianity. The other three in Hinduism are: Vishnu, who is thought of as the preserver of the universe, while two other gods, Brahma and Shiva, are considered the creator and destroyer of the universe, respectively.
We took a 5:30 a.m. visit to the ghats, different areas of steps on the banks of the Ganges River, by row boat. On the ghats people are praying, tossing flowers, launching dishes with lit candles, bathing, swimming, washing clothes, drying clothes, selling things and fishing. It is a sea of activity and variety. The colors of the women's saris are dazzling. The complexity of life is expressed at the rivers edge as well as the end of life. At one of the ghats are funeral pyres where bodies wrapped in saris are burned after death. Incredibly, we also saw some of the blind species of freshwater dolphins that manage to survive in the waters of the Ganges.
Hundreds of row boats filled with tourists make the journey along the ghats. The ghats and the tourists are another view for me into the chaos of India. I can only guess that many Indians at the ghats are able to tune out the chaos and focus on their own particular activity, be it praying, washing clothes or smiling at tourists. I am not so fortunate. I keep trying to make some sense, order or meaning out of it and I can't. I am not in awe. I am lost in confusion. I feel like I have flunked the exam at the Ganges River.
Later we visit a Hindu temple and our guide explained some of the Hindu gods to us. The main one, that includes all the others, is OM. This is the name they used for the administrative password for my computer when they installed the English version of Windows on my PC. Now I know why. This is kind of like the "three in one God" of Christianity. The other three in Hinduism are: Vishnu, who is thought of as the preserver of the universe, while two other gods, Brahma and Shiva, are considered the creator and destroyer of the universe, respectively.
posted by Chris at 11:00 PM
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