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I doubt that more than a week has gone by in the two and a half years since first moving to Banaras that something hasn’t caught me off guard. Whether it’s a festival, a person, a smell or a person emitting a smell, it’s a city that’s never short of new, confusing and often challenging experiences that rarely lets you come down off your toes (and often times wants nothing more than to knock you flat off your feet).
My most recent experience of this came in the midst of the most mundane of activities; buying lunch.
Wild Flower and I were having a pretty chaotic morning at home and so I opted to grab Little Feather, jump on the Scooter and ride off and get us all some lunch. There is this wonderfully cheap and nasty little eatery around the corner from our place that makes a fantastic Aloo Paratha (which if you haven’t had one before then do yourself a favour and don’t bother reading the rest of this post, instead close up your laptop, go find a good Indian Restaurant, and enter into paradise) and so we rode on up and put in our orders. I didn’t have cash with me and so we then proceeded to ride off in search of an ATM that wasn’t bone dry; a feat which sounds simple but can often prove a challenge round these parts, and were lucky enough to find a local one flush with cash on our first attempt and so rode back victorious.
Our food still wasn’t ready so Little Feather and I sat at a table and began waiting, and waiting, a.n.d.w.a.i.t.i.n.g.a.n.d.w.a.i.t.i.n.g.a.n.d.w.a.i.t.i.n.g....
During the next 40 minutes I’d been told the usual “just 5 minutes more” (with obligatory head wobble) about 100 times and apart from the handful of times when the Uncle who ran the place would come out of the kitchen with a bag full of food scraps and throw it out the front door to some of the street cows who would happily eat it up, nothing much really happened. I finally decided to kill some time by riding off and buying a clay cup full of Dahi (yoghurt) to go with lunch with the hopes of returning to a meal that was ready to go. So off we went.
All pretty mundane..
Except that upon arriving back at the food place I began pushing down the kick stand on the Scooter to park when I saw the Uncle stepping out the front door with a plastic bag full with our lunch. I left the motor running and reached into my pocket to get the cash to pay him and as he got closer to us so too one of the bulls from the street decided to follow suite and wandered right up along side. I handed the Uncle the cash and he began handing me my food when the bull, which was literally standing inches away from the bike whipped it’s head over and tried to bite the bag out of his hand. The Uncle slapped the bull on the face and pushed its head out of the way with one hand whilst handing me the bag with the other. At this point still all very normal (yes.. even on a main road in the middle of the city this is all rather normal) so I took the bag with one hand and slowly began accelerating to just move a bit past the bull so as to not fall off balance, but it was at that moment I felt something in the air change.
I probably hadn’t moved more than a meter or two when I turned and looked back over my shoulder to witness the Uncle who’d just given me my food literally diving back into this store and slamming the door closed. I was continuing forward slowly so needed to turn my attention back to the road ahead, but would seconds later turn my head for a second glance that succeeded in uncovering a sight which will live with me forever; the bull, terrifyingly close, charging down the ragged streets of Varanasi with his sights set firmly on me and my little bag of Parathas.
Instincts kicked in and I ripped back on the throttle as far as it would go and the motor roared to life (well.. buzzed a little bit, it is only 109cc after all). In front of me all I could see was the familiar pandemonium of locals running to get off the streets, behind me a bull with it’s hooves pounding on the cracked bitumen. We accelerated pasted a handful of shops which were quickly filling up with locals all scrambling to get off the street and out of the way of the charging beast before I would turn my head again and feel some relief seeing that we were making a little patch of space between us and our pursuer. Turning my attention forward however, revealed that before us lay an even greater challenged; a crowded 4 way intersection.
In amongst the constantly merging traffic that acts like thousands of Tetris pieces fighting for position, I could see the line I wanted to take but knew that within seconds it could be blocked by any number of vechicles and thus there was really nothing for it. I lowered my head, squeezed Little Feather between my knees and floored it.
With my thumb firmly holding down on the horn and a prayer on my lips we sailed through the intersection and whipped through the corner, only then turning our heads to see if our pursuer would follow us.. and he did.
Again I ripped back on the throttle and continued flying down this wider street, horn blasting as loud as it could go, overtaking anything and everything until I came upon a side street where I knew I could disappear in amongst the gullys and alleyways that I've come to know so well. One last glance over my shoulder at the beast which was now back some distance yet was still charging, still struggling to stay from falling off balance in every pothole and still kicking out his legs in a deranged Aloo Paratha desiring frenzy, and we disappeared into the labyrinth which is the Varanasi gulleys/alleyways/backstreets.
Minutes later we busted through our front door and being fired up with adrenaline I told the entire story to Wild Flower before I'd even cleared the welcome mat. I thought it was a great story, though her response of bursting into tears leads me to think that perhaps I should have shared it with a different crowd. Whilst the whole event lasted no more than a couple of minutes, it's a memory that I plan on boring my great grandkids with around the dinner table on more than one occasion! And whilst it might sound insane, it's really just the way life goes in a town like Banaras; one minute you're peacefully buying your lunch, the next minute your running with the bulls.
