Journey to India

It is difficult to find time to write when you are on the road, unless you make it a strict regime. I find myself wanting to say lots, explore lots of my half baked ideas, and end up thinking them and then moving on, but sometimes managing to say a little in emails to friends.

I am behind in my blog by about a month. I want to tell you about my good experiences in Kalakankar, Delhi, and now in Varanasi. And I will.

 

In the meantime, we are in Varanasi since December 1st, taking in this small dusty town on the banks of the river Ganges. I am looking for the magic that it promises, which indeed I did see when I last came in 1983. It's hard for me to see it. I have seen loads of army troops, stationed to keep the Hindus and Moslems from fighting over a spot that both feel are holy to them. The ubiquitous urine, garbage, plastic, cows, dogs, beggars, more holy men, red pan juice, is hard to ignore. The Ganges, also known as a pesticide soup by environmentalists, is supposed to clean itself up miraculously from whatever you put into it. And indeed, tests were done many years ago that indicated that it did contain a very efficient bacteria that seemed to digest biological waste very efficiently. However, that did not include the toxic waste of hundreds of large factories upstream who dump everything into the river....

 

"From the plains to the sea, pharmaceutical companies, electronics plants, textile and paper industries, tanneries, fertilizer manufacturers and oil refineries discharge effluent into the river"

 

The huge increase in population has tested its miraculous abilities sorely. It's always been known as Ma Ganga. So I ask myself, how much can mother take? As a mother, I can clean up, and I did, constantly it seemed, after my little kids. But somewhere in their growing years, I taught them to clean up themselves. In a household where the kids grow up, and bring in friends, is it reasonable and respectful to expect Mother to clean it all up? How indeed do we treat a mother? If indeed a mother is a person who is expected to work till she drops dead unquestioningly, then it makes sense to treat Ma Ganga like a bottomless garbage bin.

 

I see her as a mother who needs a very big break, a chance to recuperate, and some respect. She is beautiful either way, but the devotional love has more meaning when the relationship is based on respect, and not just an unseeing adulation.