by Home
Something was happening up ahead. A commotion, a crowd: the film shoot I had seen from the boat. Large screens and lights were being hauled into place. The camera was on rails. In the midst of all the activity it was difficult to tell who was part of the production and who were extras and who was just watching. Next to the busy work of the film set, apparently oblivious to it, a holy man sat in front of a small orange shrine. He had grey hair and a beard that looked like it was made out of the fur of a long-haired animal, mythical in origin, close to extinction and completely incontinent. A dozen listeners sat, cross-legged, on a blue tarp. Their teacher had before him a presumably sacred book the size of a comprehensive, if slightly out of date, road atlas. When I say slightly out of date, I mean from a time before there were cars, when there were no roads – or atlases. The director called out instructions to his crew, his actors, the extras. More screens and lights were assembled. One of the actors was playing the part of a holy man. He was a healthier-looking, more expensively dressed version of the bearded holy man a few paces away. His hair and beard were obviously fake; they looked like human hair, but not the hair of this particular human. Red-assed monkeys swarmed and squealed over the building behind the shrine, clambered down on to its orange roof. One of them swung down and tried to grab the sacred road atlas from the guru. The monkey was quick, but insufficiently strong. The book dropped from his paw and the guru continued his instruction. As he did so he took, from a plastic bag, what looked like an old turd but was actually a very overripe banana and tossed it in the direction of the monkey. The monkey grabbed it and scampered back up to the roof of the shrine. The director called ‘Action’ and the monkey peeled and ate his banana directly above the head of the guru. The scene from the movie involved one of the actors standing still while, behind him, a young woman in a green sari slinked shyly past. The actor playing the holy man had nothing to do with this scene; he was just hanging around. The director said, ‘Cut.’ Fed up with his banana, the monkey dangled down and – there was no satisfying him – snatched one of the marigold garlands from behind the guru's head. It now began to seem that they were a double act, that instead of instructions in navigation some kind of lesson in evolution was being enacted. We began as thieves, swinging from trees and stealing whatever we could lay our paws on – books, bananas, marigolds. Then, over time, we learned to sit cross-legged and talk and listen, and the urge to pilfer and steal gradually diminished. In the larger scheme of things, the fact that some of us went on to make films or write poems called ‘Howl’ was irrelevant. The monkey was sat on the orange shrine, head cocked to one side, as if he might begin to see the error of his ways. He looked like he was listening, but he may have been taking the piss or wondering where his next banana was coming from. The director said ‘Action’ again and the same scene was shot again. The girl in the green sari slinked past. The male lead looked at the camera with a completely gormless expression on his face. The monkey grew bored and went ricocheting up the walls of the building. The holy man continued mumbling his instruction.
I took an auto rickshaw back to the hotel. We'd only travelled a few hundred yards when the driver stopped so that he could pick up a purple pile of tiny aubergines from a friend. Immediately something smacked into the back of us. I thought nothing of it, assumed it was a collision – a car or another tuk-tuk crashing into us – but it was actually a policeman, a traffic cop, whacking the back of our tuk-tuk with his baton: Varanasi's robust implementation of a red route. We roared off again. It was a different experience to being cocooned in a car. Travelling by Ambassador was like being in the armour-plated discomfort of a Humvee. This was a whole new ball game. Actually, it was more like a video game. I was too tall, obviously. Once I had folded myself into the seat, I could see almost nothing until it was within a few feet or inches of smashing us to pieces. In addition to everything else – the competing traffic, the oncoming traffic, the din, the fumes, the noise – the journey was also a steeplechase. We were always crashing over some kind of speed hump or into a trench. It would have played hell with the suspension, but since the suspension had been shot to hell years ago it made no difference. Nothing made any difference, so we rode roughshod over everything. Everything except a manhole, completely uncovered. We veered round it in the nick of time even though the hazard was clearly indicated – by a half brick placed inches from the rim. Cars, buses and tuk-tuks reeled into view and shrieked past. I've never had any enterprising ideas, but it occurred to me that there was scope for a simulated version of this experience, a computer game calledVaranasi Death Trip or simply – in homage to Scorsese and De Niro –Tuk-tuk Driver. The idea would be to travel from the Taj Ganges to Manikarnika without getting crushed, losing a limb or having your nerves shredded.
I ate dinner in the attained safety of the Taj and then had a beer in the bar: a Kingfisher with a slightly oily taste, from a clear bottle. There were only a handful of people there, no one sitting at the bar, no one to talk to. Perhaps with the solitary drinker in mind, the hotel had provided a selection of books about Varanasi. One of them was calledEnd Time City , a book of photos by Michael Ackerman. It took some adjusting to: the buildings looked familiar, but the pictures were in black and white, and the most obvious thing about the place I'd spent the day walking round was its colour. It was probably the most colourful city on earth. To get rid of the colour was to create a place that, in some ways, was not a place at all but a stunned reaction to it. They were like pictures of the inside of the photographer's head while he was here, or later, while he was remembering it, or while he was asleep, sweat-drenched and dreaming about it. There were monkeys, sad-looking and thoughtful, aware, even if they did not yet know it, that if other things died then they would too. Sure enough, a few pages on, there was one of them, dead as a loved dog, coins scattered over it. People crouched, reading, behind the bars of a cage or temple. Normal life in a place where the idea of normal was as exotic as a monkey sleeping on your shoulder. Streets in the sense of the gap between buildings where you could walk or chuck garbage or live, or not. A face evaporating in a fire. Shaved heads, a blur of animal. Things no longer alive, vultures the size of turkeys. Rags that must have been clothes. Cloth imprinted with the divine, stained. The pictures were stains. Time was a stain. I took a gulp of beer. They weren't there just to be looked at like photos, these pictures. They accosted you, lunged and reeled at you. Some were like daylight after emerging from a dark lane, others were as impenetrable as an alley after hours sightseeing in bright sun; the best were both. After looking at them for a while, the colours of the actual city – the pink and orange and vermilion, the blue of the sky – drained away, got forgotten, reduced themselves to the nothing glare of a light bulb, the white glow of cotton, the gleam of sun on water or an eye, gleaming, and the black of everything else, the night that never went away, that lurked, waited.
I went walking in those lanes the next day, in colour again. I had my neat little digital camera, but ended up not taking any pictures, even though everything was crying out to be photographed. Many of the lanes were only wide enough for two people to walk side by side, but bikes, motorbikes and cows managed to squeeze past too. That was something I was beginning to realise about India: there was always room. Even when there was no room, there was room. The sort of opposite was also true: however slender the lane on which you found yourself, there was always a narrower lane leading off to an even narrower alley. Eventually, when this stopped being true, there was a dead-end or an alley leading back to a lane that seemed, by comparison, the size of a major thoroughfare. It was difficult to believe that this web of lanes and alleys had ever been mapped. There was no need. Everyone knew where they were going, and how to get there. Most people were there already. Women in red and yellow saris flickered by like load-bearing flames. Shops, stalls and people sleeping were squeezed into every cranny and shadow. Everyone was busy going about their business, even if that business was just sitting. Sitting or dusting – a waiting game,
essentially. People who looked like they were lazing around, doing nothing, sprang into action the moment any kind of sale seemed possible. This was true even if they were asleep, using their arms as numb pillows. If they had carpets to sell, then it made sense to sit on a stack of them. Most of the trade came from within the community of stallholders. They were always buying things from each other: food, tea, sweets. One of the things they were always buying was money. No one had any change. So if a tourist wanted to purchase a souvenir or a fun toy for his kids back home in Washington or London, then a boy was sent off to another stall to buy some smaller denominations of note. In this way a minor transaction created enormous ripples of economic activity that spread through the whole neighbourhood, animating it, generating interest. I didn't yet have any hash to smoke – was not sure I would even want to – but I bought, on spec, a small pipe. The guy had dozens of them, several of which were completely blocked. I paid with a fifty-rupee note and – after a boy was dispatched – received in change a twenty that looked like it had been unearthed from the bottom of a compost heap. I loved that about India, the way that, in spite of everything, stuff retained its value. In another life, I could quite happily have worked here. There was something seductive about spending your time tending a stall that was both workplace and pub, the place you hung out with your friends, without your wife, without beer, and often without customers. If you didn't have a wife, it was less appealing, obviously. Then you had to rely more on the solace of the newspaper. The spectacles worn by certain men – thick lenses, black plastic frames – lent the act of reading these newspapers a most scholarly air. Wherever a newspaper was being read, however great the surrounding commotion, there was the contemplative air of a reference library. Pages were turned. The sun was directly overhead. Spears of light made the shadows darker. Soldiers in khaki sweaters sat cradling rifles with wooden butts, the kind of weapons associated with the Second World War. Nearby was a large sunlit courtyard, where a game of badminton – doubles – was being played. It was surrounded, on three sides, by steep green walls where monkeys paid no attention to the game. They were interested only in bananas and there were no bananas to hand.
Shortly after this I found myself outside a temple – I didn't know which one, only that it was not the big one, Vishwanath, with all the airport security: metal detectors and searches. That's why there were so many soldiers around: because Vishwanath, the Golden Temple, and a mosque were practically on top of each other, goading the faithful, inciting them to live in peace. It was the old ‘neighbours from hell’ scenario, raised to the level of intense theological principle and proximity. There is no God but God, says the one place. There are millions of them, says the other. The fact that people were able to get along in harmony for years did not mean that, at the drop of a hat, they would not be at one another's throats. Hence the soldiers.
I took off my sandals and stepped inside the temple. The tiled floor was wet underfoot. It was a dark, rather wet, not entirely clean-looking place. There was an assortment of gods tucked into little niches and an even larger assortment of kids eager to explain who they all were. Ganesh was there, draped with marigolds, with a black face and beady eyes, eyes made of beads. Ganesh, one of the boys explained, was the god of good fortune – and it was easy to see why. He looked as if he couldn't believe his luck – half elephant and he still gets to be a god! That's the thing about Hinduism, though – everyone is in with a shout and there is always room for another god. Garuda (part eagle) was there and so was Hanuman, the monkey. Hinduism is the Disney of world religions. The gods all have their consorts, and the gods and their consorts all have their own private form of transport: Vishnu travels by eagle (Garuda), Shiva by bull (Nandi), Kartikeya by peacock … The list and the permutations of the list are endless, impossible to keep track of, but it seems safe to assume that even the ‘vehicles’ (whom one would have thought capable of taking care of their own travel arrangements) have their vehicles, that Garuda occasionally rides an owl or tortoise. And Ganesh, the elephant, how does he travel? By mouse, of course.
If there is one thing the great monotheisms have in common, it is the lack of a sense of humour. Is there a single joke in the Bible or the Qu'ran? Hinduism, I saw now, was a joke, but it was not just a joke; it was completely ridiculous. And it didn't stop there. It did away with the idea of the ridiculous by turning it into an entire cosmology! I didn't really know if this was true about Hinduism, but here, in this Hindu temple, the notion of the ridiculous became suddenly sublime.
It was only a small temple. My tour was soon complete. I gave some old rupees to the boys who had shown me round, stepped out into the remembered sun. My sandals were where I had left them. I was pleased to have them on again, to not be walking barefoot through the dusty, shit-splattered lanes of Varanasi. The invention and development of footwear was so obviously a good thing that my happiness, the spring in my step that derived from being comfortably shod, was accompanied by a corresponding draining of enthusiasm. What, a few moments earlier, had seemed such a persuasive notion – that ridiculousness might be the animating principle of life – seemed, in the face of this more pedestrian idea of progress, abruptly … ridiculous. No sooner had I thought this, than I'd suddenly had enough of walking. I wanted to go back to the hotel, to playVaranasi Death Trip again.
I bought a can of Coke (to get more change) and struck a deal with a tuk-tuk driver (who had none). I hoped to avoid saying the name of the hotel – an immediate incitement to hyper-inflation – but did not know the name of any other landmark in the vicinity. So the Taj it was, or should have been – but after five minutes we lurched off the main road.
‘What are you doing?’ I shouted. I wasn't angry, but I had to shout to make myself heard above the noise of the tuk-tuk and the other traffic. ‘Why are we going this way?’
‘Main road closed,’ he said. The main road may have been closed, but it was hard to believe it could have been in worse condition than these side roads. They weren't roads at all, just dusty lanes, unpaved, full of rubble, trash-strewn. We made another turning, into a smaller, even less roadworthy road, through what was evidently one of the poorest parts of the city. That's probably not true: there are endless degrees of poverty. Compared with some areas, this one might have been relatively affluent, desirable, even. A couple of happy-looking pigs were rooting through a mass of garbage. Some of this rubbish had been compacted down into a dark tar, a sediment of concentrated filth, pure filth, filth with no impurities, devoid of everything that was not filth. The layer on top of this comprised a mulch of rotting vegetables from which a suitably adapted creature could conceivably derive a vestige of nutrition. On top of this was an assortment of browning marigolds, bits of soggy cardboard (not automatically to be discounted as a calorific source) and freshish-looking excrement (ditto). The whole thing was set off with a resilient garnish of blue plastic bags. In its way it was a potential tourist attraction, a contemporary manifestation of the classical ideal of squalor. I was quite excited by it, was tempted to ask the driver to stop so that I could have a better look, perhaps even take a picture. Before I had a chance to do so, he had stopped. Because the tuk-tuk was surrounded by a swarm of kids. There are plenty of dirty kids running around Varanasi, barefoot in ragged T-shirts, pestering tourists for rupees. But these kids, it became immediately clear, were worse off. Even by the standards of the penniless, they were poor. By the standards of the dirty, they were filthy, as filthy as the pigs nosing around in the garbage. It was even possible that what I had taken for a rubbish tip was actually their playground, perhaps even their kitchen. There was nothing charming about them, but they were kids, kids with teeth and eyes and thin arms, and, as such, there was – or could have been – something charming about them. They were hyena children, urban prairie dogs, wild, feral creatures. More accurately, they were like the detached, highly animated parts of a single swarming entity with dozens of eyes and multiple arms and hands, all of which were reaching into the tuk-t
uk, grabbing at my bag, my camera, my arms, my pockets. The tuk-tuk driver looked frightened. Fortunately I'd had some small experience of this before, in Naples, when a gang of ten-year-olds had robbed me. Back then I hardly knew what to do; by the time I had figured out what was happening, they had made off with my wallet. Now, keeping my bag firmly between my legs, I lashed out as spitefully as possible, using elbows, fists and forearms to hit anything that came near me while taking care not to hit anyone in the face. It was unlikely that they had parents, but I did not want the daddy of any of them to appear on the scene, wanting to know why this rich tourist had bloodied his little boy's snout. Swatting and jabbing, clutching my belongings and guarding my pockets, I ordered the tuk-tuk driver to keep going.
‘Drive on!’ I shouted with all the imperial authority I could muster. ‘Drive on!’ The engine fumbled into life. Hands were still grabbing and snatching. Unable to get anything more substantial, they resorted now to pinching my flesh. The tuk-tuk began to move. ‘Faster!’ I roared, never ceasing to punch and parry. ‘Run them over if necessary!’
We accelerated noisily away. A projectile – a stone or a brick, conceivably a lump of dried shit – thumped on the roof of the tuk-tuk, but we were in the clear. The driver said nothing. I said nothing. It was not clear whether he had deliberately, as they say in thrillers, ‘set me up,’ whether he was complicit in the ambush or as much the unwilling victim as myself. Certainly he had looked alarmed. Anyway, I was safe now. It occurred to me that a version of this incident could usefully get worked into theVaranasi Death Trip software. I twisted round and looked back. I could still see these hyena children by their patch of garbage. They were hopping round excitedly holding something aloft – something that flashed in the sunlight – as though it were a trophy, the spoils of a raid. I checked my belongings: I still had my camera, my iPod; my money belt was still around my waist. And then I realized: theyhad made off with something. The object I had seen them waving excitedly in the air was my can of Coke.