very nicey varanasi

leaving varanasi is exhilarating and sad. it should be a city i can live in forever – its hovels ... the whole city’s a prehistoric strip mall – traffic, beggars, friendliness-hostility mix, omnipresent food, wily sadhus, consumptive ritual, nanometre negotiations of space, spewed and tumbled architectures, as if the city’s made of oneiric mud, ghat scene, as if california were an addict of the drug old religion, bipeds, cows, goats, bicycles, motorcycles, tuktuks, cars, buses all righteously, nonchalantly claiming the same real estate, tourist as alien and target, scum and saviour, hash, opium, excrement (i'm even offered dmt one night) ... the ganga anchoring the scene like a spiritual stock exchange.

but it’s not.

its assumed holiness, monoculture, filth and noise, as if these are virtues, expats either caustic or earnest ... my tuktuk driver somehow manages not to kill us or anyone else on the way to lal bahadur shastri airport, which is the puzzle piece fitting the emptiness between varanasi and the world.

 

except it’s still india – different flights of different airlines to mumbai and delhi leaving at the same time share the same gate according to the departure screen. the sign above the gate just says mumbai.

no?it’s?both?yes?it’s?both?yes?it’s?india

a thanatopsychocultural blend of

melancholy, god-cows,

pansensuous gutter dreams

coming soon to varanasi –

• a starbucks by dashashwamedh ghat
• grunge punk nightly in vishwanath temple following aarti
• skateboarding park on the ghat steps
• sadhu rap thursdays
• calvin klein bovine sex club sundays
• burn your favourite enemy tuesdays
• varanicey verynasti 5,000 year anniversary celebration lasting 5,000 years – all kashites become honorary sadhus
• bumper tuktuk – come on! you can finally touch!
• feminist wednesdays
• send one varanasi beggar to manhattan for every 1,000 tourists
• amputate a limb of every 1,000^th tourist UN justice program
• shri baba baba turns the ganga to piss, parts the piss, and the children of kasha walk through to the promised other shores
• spiked lassi fridays
• cow poop spas for the world’s uberultrarich
• a subway line running under the ghats, a station at each ghat
• malaria mondays
• burn your saree saturdays
• bike lanes!
• food court at varanasi junction
• anti-corruption mosquito bots

 

* danke for the varies, rev bon hofmann