Ganges Dawn Predawn, everyone’s awake, Kashi’s jumping. Excluding the homeless thousands who are unawake. I’m walking cautiously to the ghats in the semi-dark through littered streets, trying to distinguish trash from cardboard and newspaper humps of low-castes sleeping, groaning while sleeping. Do they dream while they sleep? Is it a collective dream? Has their 2000-years […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 15, 2015
Tulsi Ghat, Benares Sunday, 11/15/15, late afternoon Untouchables with mobiles. Cluster of dusky underfed humans, 20 or more, barefoot, rags on their heads or faces glide by noiselessly, except for three or four on their mobiles shouting into the phones in Hindi. Self-confessed electronic utopian, Indian PM Modi, envisions a “digital India.” The resident macaque […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 14, 2015
Acid A 23-year-old Russian tourist sustained severe burns on her face and neck after a man whose marriage proposal she allegedly spurned attacked her with acid Friday morning in Varanasi. Police said the tourist, Daya Yurieva, arrived in Varanasi five days ago and was a paying guest at the Hriday Lal Srivastva “Homestay,” in the […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 14, 2015
Shiva Kashi Kashi is said to be Lord Shiva’s city. Shiva destroys to recreate. Shiva defies categories of pure / impure, auspicious / inauspicious. Shiva is beautiful and terrifying, anointing his body with fragrant sandalwood and with the gray ash of the cremated. Shiva is fearsomely ascetic and boundlessly passionate. It is said that in […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 13, 2015
Monkeys As India launches an $18 billion plan to expand the information “revolution” to its provinces, many of the problems it faces are holdovers from the past–electricity shortages, congested cities, an exponentially increasing population, resurgence of infectious diseases–and monkeys. The clash between the old world and the new has come sharply into focus in the […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 12, 2015
Leper Every Diwali (one of India’s major holidays comparable to Xmas), Bhupendra Mahapatra and eight other residents of his colony knock on people’s doors in the early morning hoping to get alms. It is a familiar exercise for these and more residents of Premnagar Kushtrogi Kalyan Samiti, who formerly suffered from leprosy. They visit virtually […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 11, 2015
Ganges River Water Were I to collect Ganges River water into a parcel, bind it then mail it, what then? Would I be able to capture the water to package and bind? If so, to whom would I send the Ganges water parcel? What would the recipient think when opening the parcel and having the […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 10, 2015
Animals Kashi I am weary of being human –Clarice Lispector Among Hindus, the cow has a long history of veneration: it provides milk, its excrement provides fuel, it is a gentle ruminant. Lord Krishna in one of his manifestations was a cowherd adored by the beautiful gopi, or cowherd maiden, Radha. The cow is officially […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 9, 2015
Smells Kashi Petrol, excrement, urine, sweat, sacred cows, vagrant goats, dogs, monkeys, betel, lime, turmeric, curry, sand, sandalwood, saffron, incapacitated WCs, miscellaneous trash, rose petals, decaying wood and stone buildings overlooking the Ganges, burning wood and burning flesh, the indescribable smell of the Ganges. Shiva followers or scammers paint their forehead: three white horizontal lines […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 7, 2015
Assi Ghat, Benares Saturday, 11/7/15 dusk I ask the tuk-tuk wallah to please wait as I climb out a few streets from Assi Ghat. I pass a dilapidated building on the left with the words Shreeman Infrareality inscribed on the frayed wooden lintel. I purchase a small bag of unshelled peanuts for 10 rupees and […]