Paint The Town Paan..

Step out your front door, it'll be there. Take a boat ride down the Ganga ('Ganges River'), it'll be there. Walk into a fancy looking Government office, you'd better believe it'll be there! Paan, otherwise known as betel nut, is as ubiquitous in Banaras as the holy cow! And no matter where you go you can be well assured that it won't be long before your eyes (and probably your feet) will stumble across a smattering of someone's most recent chewing session.

Paan is a chewing stimulant native to India and Pakistan and derives it's name from the Sanskrit word for 'leaf' or 'feather.' Due to it's psychoactive properties (most often tobacco) it's popular amongst hard working bicycle rickshaw wallas, auto rickshaw drivers, day laborers, taxi drivers, fruit sellers, tailers, fishermen, chai wallas, salesmen, water buffalo herders, businessmen, old ladies, ok, so it's pretty much popular amongst everyone. There's a pretty broad variety of Paan from the innexpensive to the slighty more pricey, but at its cheapest and nastiest it sells for only a couple of rupees (AU$0.08) per packet and once you've let it linger in your mouth for as long as you care to, it seems you can spit it out wherever the bloomin' hell you want.

I remember the first time I walked into my faculty building at Banaras Hindu University. The building is old and not particularly well cared for, but it's a university building and so it still looks big and official. As I walked inside the front doors, through the lobby area and began climbing the flights of stairs it was quite the shock to see that even inside a place as prestigious as BHU, the corners of every stair well, the end of every hallway and at the base of every window sill, the tell tail signature of someone offloading their Paan payload was still waiting there for the world to see.  

Sure it's gross, sure it's unhygienic, and sure it'll give you cancer, but the splatter often has a quiet charm about it if you're willing to accept it. It took me sometime to begin noticing but eventually I pulled out the camera and went for a walk to photograph some of the local "street art." This series represents just one 40 minute walk around my neighbourhood photographing the Paan stains in my local gullies. What this collection represents to me is that as long as there is Paan to be sold, there will be photographs to be taken.

Afternoon On The Gunga..

Last week we were blessed enough to have a few friends from Australia breeze into town and spend sometime with us here in Varanasi. This just so happened to coincide with my entire family coming down sick with various illnesses which, of course, made for an extremely long and difficult week and meant that we spent most of our time running off to see Doctors and staying awake throughout the nights tending to our sick little ones.

Thankfully the day before they left my tribe was all feeling much better and so we were able to join them on one of the staples of visiting Varanasi; a boat ride on the Gunga.

The city is such a memorizing place from the water and there is something so special about the feeling of stepping outside of it and peering back upon it as you float down the river. We've been on the water at sunrise, sunset and night, in the hot season and the cold, and each time I find that it's such a different experience than the last with differing colours, water levels, Pujas and atmospheres along the shore line which means that even though it's hugely touristy, it's also amazing.

I won't say too much more, instead I'll post a few of my favourite photos from this most recent trip down the Gunga and let the images do the talking for me.