Harold Jaffe’s Sacred Geography in NEW ORLEANS REVIEW

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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 of servitude infected their dreams?

Sacred Geography: Dispatches from India (continued)