Thankfully, it didn’t take long for me to find him again. After the drive to the village and my impromptu dance performance, I was feeling the exhaustion.
“You are very popular,” Ajay laughed.
“It’s amazing,” I told him. “Your people are amazing. But I don’t how much longer I’m going to be able to stand. Never mind dance.”
“No problem, no problem,” Ajay replied as he led me and the rest of the village to an elder’s house, where I could get some rest. Outside the front door, however, hundreds of Indians waited, taking pictures, videos, and singing and dancing. Finally, Ajay was able to convince the crowds that I needed some sleep.
I hadn’t slept in a bed in over two days, during which I had run into a wall, been kicked in the face, and had traveled more Indian roads than I would ever want to again, and though I was overwhelmed with the love and attention, I was also, quite frankly, overwhelmed.
The next morning, the village was calmer as Ajay took me around and introduced me to the people who made up his home. So many stories, so many lives, all pulsing together in one common rhythm. When I was a kid, this was the school I had dreamed of attending. There were no facts and figures, no dates and names—just the shared and miraculous human experience of people living and dying and trying to create the best lives they could in the process.
Ajay explained to his neighbors what I was doing and though I knew that my choice to travel with no money confused them—as much as on some days it confused me—they were all excited that I had come to their village.
Ajay laughed, “They think next time you should bring some money.”
I agreed with him, “Next time, I will.”
As the morning sun began its ascent, the villagers made sure my tank of gas was full and that I had a solid breakfast, and as I rode alone away from my new friends, their love at my back, I knew yet another miracle had arrived.
I had decided that my next stop would be Varanasi, the city of fire, and the holiest city of India. Varanasi is not like New York. It doesn’t have skyscrapers. Varanasi is not like Barcelona. It doesn’t have a beautiful coastline. Varanasi is not like my hometown of London. It doesn’t have tree-lined avenues leading into a lovely inner city park (that’s Hyde Park, for those of you who haven’t visited). Nestled on the banks of the most famous river in the world, the Ganges, Varanasi is a city of life. But also, it is a city of death.
* * *
“Coming to India with yellow bike is much strangeness!” the small man yelled at me as I walked along the Ganges. Not far from where we stood, there was an open fire, and within it, the body of a recently deceased person. No, that was not a typo. A person. A dead person being burned in the open air before their ashes were to be thrown into the Ganges. Hindus believe that if you die and are thrown into the Ganges you will not need to be reincarnated. A goal of all Hindus, I was told.
I thought our proximity to death would warm this stranger’s heart, but apparently burning your dead in the open was natural in Varanasi, while riding a yellow motorbike was “much strangeness.” It was my final rejection for the day. I had already been through many others as I made my way to this holy town along the banks of the famous Ganges.
I sat down by the river. If Zen is pure mental and physical exhaustion, then I was the living Buddha. I could barely remember my own name, let alone form a coherent thought. All I could do was sit and stare at the river, the smoke, the strange and bewildering world I had found myself in.
An older man walked past and then stopped, asking me what I was doing.
I didn’t know how to respond. I was tired of asking for help only to be rejected.
“I don’t know,” I finally replied, unable to say much more.
“One day you, too, will end up like this,” he shared, referring to the fires burning around us. “Live inside this moment and do not lose this time.”
He walked away, quickly consumed by the crowds, but his words remained. Those small moments—like the sunset on that Nebraskan farm or playing music with Finesse and Tchale or having tea with my new friend in Turkey—they were immortal. The dead could burn; life could be reborn; but none of it mattered, unless we were willing to live inside the moment.
I stood up. Suddenly, India was not a great heaving beast, but a collection of small steps, of endless stories, of magic amid the mayhem. It was my job to stay in the moment. I continued to walk along the Ganges and soon met Dilip, a young riverboat driver, who offered to take me for a dip in the Ganges. Dilip was short and slim like many Indians, but his arms were bigger than most, built up by his days on the river.
In Greek myth, Charon is the name of the riverboat driver who escorts dead souls across the river Styx to Hades, the kingdom of the dead. I’m not saying Dilip was the Indian understudy for Charon, but as I boarded his boat on the murky Ganges, intending to swim in it, I hoped he wouldn’t be leading me to Hades anytime soon.
Because you see, taking a dip in the Ganges is not like taking a dip in the crisp blue waters of Lake Como. Although it is one of the holiest rivers in the world, it is also one of the dirtiest. I had seen numerous dead carcasses floating past me. A dog. Two cows. A few unidentified objects.
They say that in taking a dip in the Ganges you cleanse yourself of all your pain and suffering, but as Dilip and I drove along the dark and dreary water, I asked him: “Have you ever actually swum in the Ganges?”
“Yes,” he replied, looking out across the water, clearly not feeling the same agitation that I was. I later found out that Dilip was from one of the lower castes in India. Though he wasn’t a Dalit—one of the “Untouchables,” as they are referred to—he came low enough on the rung that being a riverboat driver was nearly akin to being a king. He wasn’t breaking out of his caste, but he certainly wasn’t being defined by it, either. He had chosen a path that few in his family would have ever dared to try.
I continued speaking even if my guide was less talkative, “It’s so interesting to me that they use the Ganges for life, they use the Ganges for death . . . it’s everything. It’s like the circle of life.”
When Dilip didn’t respond, I confirmed. “Have generations of your family lived and died on the Ganges?”
“Of course,” Dilip replied again nonchalantly before looking at me in earnest. “Many people do like this. I am no different.”
Dilip pulled the boat over. It was time for us to receive purification and hopefully not a deadly case of typhoid.
“Are you sure this is a wise thing to do?” I asked, finally feeling the fear move through me as we stripped down to our shorts.
“Yes,” Dilip responded. “Swimming in the Ganges will purify your karma. Clean the soul.”
Dilip offered me a large red scarf to wrap around my waist, which apparently was the proper attire for swimming in the Ganges. He looked out again over the water, “This is God. By feeling the vibrations, you’re always thinking, always changing.”
We said a prayer together, and then I stepped apprehensively into the cold water. Dilip moved quickly passed me, submerging himself and splashing the water on his face.
“I’m definitely not going to do that,” I thought out loud, not even realizing the words were escaping me.
Dilip laughed, “It’s okay, Leon. Many Westerners come swim in the Ganges.”
I got in a bit farther as I asked Dilip, “You do this every day?”
He nodded as I pressed forward, “And you don’t get sick?”
Dilip shook his head as I asked one more question, “Do you drink the water?”
“Yes,” he replied and then he took a drink. Okay, I hate to remind you of this fact, but again, I had just seen numerous dead carcasses float past me. A dog. Two cows. A few unidentified objects.
“Okay,” I replied, stepping deeper into the water. “Well, that’s not going to happen with me.”
Dilip lau
ghed again, “This is probably safer for you.”
I looked around. Not far from us, there was a wedding taking place on a boat. The sun was beginning to settle beneath the famous river as Dilip waded deeper into the water. I looked around, and for a moment, it didn’t even feel as though I was on planet Earth. Instead, I was in one of the many stories I had read when I was young.
Because the one thing I do remember from school are the tales of the Greek gods. Maybe it had to do with my own heritage, but as Dilip and I stood in the Ganges, I thought back to all the heroes who had traveled across the river in Charon’s boat—Heracles, Orpheus, Dionysus, and of course, Odysseus. They all were returned to the land of the living renewed and wiser for the journey. If they could do it, why couldn’t I?
I told Dilip as we bathed in the river, “I started my journey in Los Angeles at the Hollywood sign—the place where capitalism thrives—and here I am in the Ganges, the holiest place for Hindus, with you, someone I have just met.”
Dilip stood up and smiled, “Yes because God does good things.”
He offered to give me a blessing in the river, speaking the prayer in Hindi and asking me to repeat it. We held hands as we prayed—two men from different sides of the world, with entirely different life experiences, standing together in the Ganges, cleansing our souls. Masks officially dropped.
After we got out of the river, Dilip asked if I wanted to stay with him and his family in their house for the night. We walked back to where he lived with his wife, Dharmin, and their two wonderful sons, Amrit, who was five, and the youngest, Ashish, who was two.
As we ate dinner, Dilip explained that Amrit had been going to school but that they had had to take him out, as they could no longer afford it.
“The school is too much money,” Dilip explained. “And sometimes, I do not get enough passengers.”
For so many years, I took my education for granted. I hated school, but I could never imagine not having had it. It was there that I fell in love with the stories of history. It was there that I spun my first globe, looking at all the places in the world I hoped to one day see. And though I failed chemistry and algebra and a couple of other classes that we don’t need to talk about here, it was at school that I also learned how to meet new people, create friendships, and find my place in the world.
I looked at Amrit and Ashish, and I couldn’t imagine them not having that opportunity. The power of an education, whether it’s the traditional kind or one fueled by imagination, could forever alter the course of a life.
At sunset, I took Dilip and his two young sons for a walk along the banks of the Ganges, where I had just swum. Dilip held his younger son in his arms, bouncing him as we walked, showering the boy with affection, the outward proof of love. It was this love that would always keep us alive, long past our actual mortality. It was through our children that we lived beyond our own lifetimes, carrying us into the great beyond. Dilip explained how he wanted his boys to have a better life than he had. He wanted them to have better jobs. A better existence.
“I will do what I can to help them go to school,” Dilip shared, his eyes filling with tears of determination. “I teach them.”
“You teach them yourself?” I asked.
“Yes, in the night time. I come home, and then I teach them.”
In the West, school is open to everyone. We see it as a right, not a privilege. But in India, education comes with school fees, even for those who barely have enough to eat.
“Money’s always a problem everywhere,” Dilip explained. “Who doesn’t have money problem?”
He was right. You could ask the richest man in the world if he had a problem with money, and he would say yes. You ask the poorest man, and he sees that he is not alone. I was taken aback once more how a man with nothing had such a deep acceptance of this world that has so much. Here was someone who had emerged from the vicious caste system only to then fight for his children to do the same. And yet he accepted his limitations, even as he struggled against them.
“Because,” he explained, “if I am good and honest person, God might send help for me.”
We all know what’s next, right? I thanked Dilip for his help, for his kindness, and most of all for showing me how to live in acceptance of the moment that I am in. Maybe acceptance and struggle didn’t have to be in conflict. Maybe I could, in the same breath, accept my home, and yet be willing to question it. Be willing to always question my own comfort, my own happiness. It was in that questioning, that I might not feel complacent.
I explained to Dilip about the other part of my trip, the part about giving back.
I took in a deep breath before I continued, “You see, to me, education isn’t just about learning things in school. It is about learning about life. It is about learning to reach beyond what our parents have and, and . . . it’s about learning how to dream. So what I would like to do, if you agree, is to pay for the education of both your sons until they are eighteen years old.”
Dilip’s smile disappeared. “Eighteen years old?” he mumbled.
At first, I worried he might be upset, so I tried to explain it a different way, “Yes, I will pay for the education of both your sons for the next fifteen years.”
“It’s hard to take in,” Dilip began to rock back and forth slowly staring out at the water.
Suddenly, I found myself trying to convince him, as though he might not understand why I offered the gift, “You told me that you don’t want your children to do what you do. You told me that you were kind because you never knew what would happen if you were kind to someone. You say you pray every day to God to change your life. So now your children will have the opportunity to live an educated life.”
I kept talking until I saw a slow smile begin to wash over his face, tears circling his eyes as he nodded his head, taking it all in. He looked me deep in the eyes, and he began to laugh, “You help my children? You take care of my sons’ future and their education? I’m very happy! I feel very happy. I tell my wife, she’ll be so happy . . . so happy.”
His excitement was contagious. He knew even more than I did what that gift could offer, because it wasn’t just about giving a gift to one person. Like the energy of the village, the gifts were music that many might share. Just as Dilip had broken the mold and became a riverboat driver, so his sons would break the mold and go to school. Who knew how many times that torch would light another torch? How one decision might affect the next? All I could hope for, as I saw the love in Dilip’s eyes that he had for his children, was that I had offered a little spark for their fire.
I hugged Dilip and his two sons, and asked Amrit to send me a card every year telling me how school is going. And that’s how I ended up giving the one thing I always hated and for which I am begrudgingly grateful: school.
Chapter Nine
“Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Watch out,” the Englishman warned. “I was robbed in Patna.”
Benji leaned casually against the gas station wall, his arms burned from days walking in the scorching sun. He was on his own life-affirming trek, walking across the whole of India.
I will repeat.
Walking. Across. The. Whole. Of. India. Either this chap was a total madman or a complete genius. I must say, I never really figured out which one.
Benji had just bought me gas thirty miles outside the city of Patna, in the Bihar province—my next destination and the site of his robbery.
He looked around the barren station, where a bored attendant sat at a window selling empty plastic bottles filled with gasoline and occasionally with water. After his happy little tale of getting robbed in the town I was heading to, he reminded me why theft in India wasn’t something to be angry over:
“Always remember that there is someone out there less fortunate than you. Less healthy than you. Less lucky than you.”
Benji slipped his sunglasses back on and adjusted his heavy backpack. I thanked him for the gas and wished that we were both heading in the same direction, but he was heading north as I continued east, east across the world.
I started up Kindness One and tried to ignore his earlier comment: “I got robbed in Patna.” Of course, outside of Kindness One and my computer, I didn’t have much to steal. Then again, that was pretty much everything.
Benji had also told me that Bihar province was one of the most dangerous places in India. So far, I had been warned of many impending dooms without actually running into one. The world is always more foreboding from a distance, but I also knew that time and place had as much to do with my safety as anything else. Tragically, five days after I left Patna, a bomb exploded killing five people.
India will always feel flat in words, because it isn’t contained by language. It is written in color. It is drawn by sound. India breaks through all of the senses because India is filled with people. So many people.
I arrived in Patna in the middle of a religious festival, which meant people were swarming its streets, dashing and cheering between honking cars. Beet-red saris and bright-green silk clapped through the air like thunder as an assemblage of heavily armed Indian soldiers (“for protection of people,” I was told) played bass to the dancers’ treble.
For a moment I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t, in fact, in the middle of a Bollywood set, and not the town I had been so clearly forewarned about.
Kindness One and I were swept up in the sea of people until we were spit out onto a quieter street, where I tried to find some help—tried being the key term. I think one man’s response summed it up best: “You’re coming from America and say you have no money! How can that be possible? You’re asking for food and all these things. There is much money you should have!”
The Kindness Diaries: One Man's Quest to Ignite Goodwill and Transform Lives Around the World Page 13