Just had a wonderful afternoon and well really just an amazing walk back. The day had been a rainy one, and my walk there had been through clouds and the misting wetness which accompanies them. On the return journey the sun made a cameo appearance in the form of a spectacular exit. It shown through blue gray clouds, flooding its light on top and behind them to create a fabulous effect of three dimensionality. I walked along the recently constructed tourist walk which not many tourists seemed to know about. It was a cobblestone path with broad red steps leading down towards the bank of the Ganges river. Across the river was the other half of Ram Jhula, accesible only by crossing a small pedestrian hanging bride farther down. On the other side were many temples and I could hear the prayer chants echoing across the water. Behind the low buildings rose deep green mountains, the tops obscured by clouds. As I walked along the sun hurled its golden sunset light across the river and set the temples and mountains ablaze. They were illuminated both by the actual light of this world but seemingly glowing with the thousands of prayers which had been said in their presence. The usually muddy brown water turned an opaque gray with a silver sheen when the glitters of light shone upon it. A holy man dressed in white robes stood stoicly on the waters edge, gazing ahead at the mountains. An elder woman sat with a cane leaning against the bench, her hands folded in her lap, gray hair pinned neatly in a bun. I sat on a bench on the walkway, to enjoy this moment despite the droplets of today’s showers pooling on the wooden seat. Women in sari’s of blue with white flowers, green with yellow dots and red with different hued stripes trundled by, children weaving through the forest of their legs. One young boy stopped to stare at me, barely a foot from my face. His forehead was dabbed with a dot of yellow, a blessing, and his round deep brown eyes stared at me. It was a curious stare, as if he was trying to figure something out about me, it was not rude but it also was not kind. His mother called him to hurry and he sped off after the crowd, bare feet splashing in the muddy puddles on the stone.
I found myself yet again, in an in between place. I wore an Indian salwar top, and my skin was a few shades lighter than most around me, but still brown. I had been told frequently that I look Indian, my naturally black hair I had streaked with light brown, but it was wet and tangled, dark and matted against my neck. I had never gotten comfortable in the matching pants of the salwar kamiz outfit, with its giant waist one had to pull with a drawstring and tie tightly, the thighs of the pants billowing around my body. Instead I wore leggings, gray cotton ones today, and I had on black close toed shoes, while most locals wore flip flops or went barefoot. But I wondered, when a trio of boys went past, around the daring and mischievious age of 9, and one said “hello ma’am, five rupees please” and was smacked on the head by his friends as they took off, laughing. I carried a black purse, that was another feature which set me aside, I never understood how the women in Saris, one long single piece of cloth wrapped around and around coupled with a short cropped top, carried anything with them. Maybe the reality is that they didn’t. I spoke a few words of Hindi, and had been around the language that the rhythm and form of the sounds were familiar to me. For all they know I could be Indian I said to myself, indignantly, and resolved to ask the next cheeky little boy his name, in Hindi. My friend Sunny I had caught staring intently at me the week before. Now, staring is a normalcy of life in India, but it was still unnerving when it was someone that you knew. “What?!” I asked him, annoyed that I had to endure the ogling and goggling of every person on the street and not wanting to have to accept it inside as well. “I’m trying to figure out what makes you look so Indian!” he answered. “I think its your eyes, they are unusual and not those of a gora, a foreigner, and the shape of your face generally” he concluded. “I see” I responded, wondering the same thing myself, what was it that made me look Latin American, to some, Middle Eastern to others, Indian to many more and just plain ambigious to the majority, prompting the usual question about my background.
After a time of gazing out at the small town of rishikesh, taking in the suspended bridge with its two high peaks, metal wires which provided a most enjoyable jungle gym for the monkeys, and the leftover pieces of cloth from pilgrimmages which were tied to the supportive beams along the bottom, for continued good luck. I, too, was drawn to the river and descended the flat steps slowly, trying to avoid the piles of waste, mud, and water which had accumulated as in all the roads of India. I walked farther down from the Swami, not wanting to disturb his moment. I felt so small, taking up but a few square feet of space in this vast valley, surrounded by tall mountains which were covered in so many trees they appeared to be painted on. And yet, I felt powerful. The spirit of the Ganga river, my past week here of sitting with it every night, of sitting with myself in silence for several days, of living and breathing in its sacred energy, filled me with a sense of meaning. I was so pleased to be experiencing this moment, that is one of the advantages of going to a beautiful and holy space to do such self reflective activities as meditating, it is much easier than anywhere else to stay in the present moment. I stepped down to the last step, where the water, cooled by the glacial currents which streamed into it, swirled over the stone. I reached my hand in, wanting to connect with the spirit I had been sitting near for these past nights. I watched my fingers disappear and return as the water consumed and then released them according to its churning current.
“Puja?” a high pitched voice appeared in my ear. I stood up to look down at a girl of about 7 years old, wearing a ragged yellow dress. Her skin was a dark brown, the color of coffee beans, and her hair was a lighter shade, cropped short to her chin and sticking out in various directions. She pulled a stray piece out of her face with her small hand, I noticed her nails with embedded with dirt. In her hands she held a tray heaped with small leaf bowls filled with flowers with a centerpiece of the flammable white tablets and a twisted piece of cotton soaked with natural oils. Two black sticks of incense crossed each bowl, covering the yellow and orange flowers in a protective manner. “Pach rupiah” she declared, when I smiled at her, five rupees. I fished into my pocket and withdrew twenty rupees and handed them to her. She beamed at me, and with a subtle glance over her shoulder, tucked the two ten rupee bills into her dress at her shoulder. I made a motion of lighting a match and she giggled and leaped towards me with a box in her hands. She attempted to light two matches but the box was wet. She babbled at me in Hindi and I wished I remembered how to say that I don’t speak it. I felt flustered, unsure how to explain that it was fine if it couldn’t be lit, and wishing I could speak to her. She produced another box of matches. I cupped my hands as she attempted to light the tablet and it caught a few times, but blew out by the time she held the incense to the flame. I was laughing, but she was determined. She turned and called out, and a girl who had her eyes and her lips as well as the same heart shape to her face, who looked about ten years old, came forward with a large black umbrella. She said something and the younger girl held the umbrella over us. The three of us huddled underneath it, and watched as the older sister expertly struck a match, holding it almost on the flammable head, and cupped her hand around the bowl, not flinching when the flame caught and the wind swept it over her palm. The tablet burned and the cotton also, she dropped the sticks of incense onto the fire at the center of the bowl and pointed towards the river. The three of us hobbled, bent over and connected by this burning prayer bowl, the umbrella, and our brown hands.
We knelt down and I set the bowl into the water, saying a prayer with my heart rather than my mind. The girls cheered and closed the umbrella, before they scampered off I grabbed my camera, and they froze obediently, a sheepish grin on their faces. Then they shrieked and pointed toward the leaf bowl and the flowers, no longer burning but floating downstream rapidly. I snapped a few photos as the bowl paused, momentarily caught back on the stairs as the water flowed away. The river snatched it back however, and ferried it to the edge of the submerged staircase. The bowl tipped, spilling the handful of yellow and orange flowers, the incense and the once burning tablet. The flowers held for a moment, in a perfect circle, before being dispersed into the whirlpools and flow of the Ganges. I was filled with an energy, warm and orange, I could feel it emanating from my center along the bottoms of my arms, dancing up towards my neck. I glanced back and the two girls had rejoined their family, and all were watching me, they were too far for me to read their expression. I wished I had given her 50, 100, 500 rupees! But no amount of bills would pay her back for the moment she had shared with me. For the prayer and the energy which had followed, overflowing me with love and appreciation for this and every moment, and these shared connections among humans, so different yet so profoundly identical to ourselves.
I thought about how I wished I had given her money, and I did. I wondered how much 500 rupees could have provided for her and her family. But I also knew that what she had given me, and that I wish I could give her in return, was love. In that burning bowl of flowers she had put her love, in the fire danced her dreams and her own devotion. I thought about how ephemeral money was. Money doesn’t make one mourn for you when you are gone. Money doesn’t make one hug you and hold your hand, it can’t pay for that secret glance exchanged between lovers, the bashful and yet powerful knowledge that one loves and is loved. I continued along the path and headed up the stairs. I passed an umbrella standing on the stone, covered with newspaper and a tarp. And I saw four scrawny brown legs sticking out of it, and wondered if the sisters who had helped me open my heart, if they too slept and lived in such a precarious position. Beside the makeshift shelter was another tray loaded with prayer bowls, sheltered by an umbrella. I turned back from the top of the stairs and saw this brilliantly spiritual mecca, with the power of the Ganges and the temples still blazing with the suns last stand, and saw the wretched hovel where children were forced to live, on the banks of the water which us famed to make every wish come true.
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