SuicideBomb I am a female Untouchable. You prefer Dalit to Untouchable. You do not like the name Untouchable for public relations. Even as you kill us and flog us without touching us The munitions strapped across my body touch me. West of Manikarnika, the burning ghat, is the Golden Temple devoted to Lord Shiva. Barefoot, […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 12, 2015
Sacred Geography I give the beggar-sadhu in his tattered saffron dhoti with open sores on his arms a 50-rupee note. He is barefoot; he turns and pads away toward another tourist. His is not a sacred begging performed in imitation of Lord Shiva. The Varanasi sadhus who live in and around the burning ghats are […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 10, 2015
Chai Twins Monkey Chai shop. 7:30 PM. The dhobi’s workday which began at 6 AM is over. He’s having his customary plastic glass of masala chai, sitting on one of the stools at the large wooden table. His name is Mohan, he is of the washerman caste. His working day is limitless, but today it […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 10, 2015
Untouch They are blackened. Barefoot. Thin as reeds. Your untouchables. –You are not Hindu. You know nothing. I see them clean your privvies, quarry rocks, balance the burning upper-caste corpse on the bier with long bamboo poles. –You imagine seeing. You are not Hindu. You see nothing. Near the burning ghat, the shrunken untouchable woman […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 10, 2015
Turban He sat next to me in the densely crowded Delhi airport terminal. I was reading with some irritation a typically over-ornamented Thomas Mann long short story. I smelled him before I saw him–a curious odor–stale, dry, camphor- like. As though he just retrieved his garments from a lenghty seclusion in the closet. He sat […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – December 1, 2015
Hindus & Jews After the Warsaw uprising, reporters attempted to interview two of the Jewish insurgents who survived and were moving to Israel. The two fighters were so enraged—with a furious cold rage—that they looked through the reporters without uttering a word. After the Holocaust, surviving European Jews moving to Israel underwent what can be […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 29, 2015
Burn Manikarnika* the primary burning ghat in Varanasi Tourist responses Words can’t begin to describe experiencing this ghat from a boat on the Ganges at sunset. I left knowing I had seen a gateway, primal and haunting. See sole of people and there touch in hindu. this is place you forget your identity and become […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 29, 2015
Ayurveda (MRI) Back and upper legs aching after a month in sacred Kashi. Memo: Do the American thing: some kind of exercise every day. The small gym, called Bob’s, is two stories above a mobile phone shop and a mysterious venue called Aryan Academy. A dozen helter-skelter machines, scattered dumbbells, two tread- mills, one with […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 26, 2015
Elephants After spending decades in the circus, elephants Mia and Sita were rescued by an animal welfare group on Sunday, and are now en route to a conservation center on board India’s first customized elephant ambulance. The two elephants were rescued by Wildlife SOS on Sunday from the Great Circus at Thiruvanamalai, Tamil Nadu. Mia […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 25, 2015
Ganges Dusk Wake up to drums and loud chanting. 6:20 AM. Is it a dream? Here one wakes from dream into dream. Every other day is a holy day in Kashi. Another devotional festival. Today is Dev Diwali. But didn’t we celebrate Diwali, Festival of Lights, just a few days ago? That Diwali was devoted […]