From The Threshold..

 
There are countless things of physical beautiful in Banaras if you have eyes to see.. or even just eyes in general.. and over the pasts months I've slowly been amassing collections of snaps of my favourite things of beauty from around town and thought now might be a good a time as any to share some of them around.

One thing which plenty of people before me have acknowledged is that doorways here can be truly spectacular! Many of the art works that surround doors have spiritual significance, many are simply for aesthetics, some doorways are relatively new, others truly ancient, but one feature most have in common and one that I find truly wonderful is that they are rarely straight. Whether it was messed up in the construction or simply warped throughout the ages, doors almost never shut properly and are almost always buckling to the side. What this says to me is that every doorway acknowledges and mirrors what this city embodies and lives out everyday; that everything here is just a little bit sideways. 

Enjoy your tour through Banaras; from the threshold..

* Dedicated to our sweet Fräu-Clau with deepest gratitude for the use of her stunning shot as the title photo for this series.

मेरे बगीचे में - In My Garden..

* Time has really gotten away from me these past months and I haven't posted anything about the Resurrection Garden in what feels like forever! Parts of this blog have been sitting around half finished for months so I'm excited to finally release it from it's purgatorial state (otherwise known as the draft folder) and out into the world. *


In mid October 2013 I had 5 of the 7 beds dug out and began throwing about some seed. Much to Wildflower's dismay, I had trays full of seedlings in our house that I'd been growing from seed and they were doing well on the window sill because I was finding that very few seeds that I was direct sowing into the garden were germinating. Over the space of a month I'd wasted quite a few seeds over a few different sowings with very poor results to show for it, and so I start chitting seeds at home to see if I could work out if the problem was with the seeds or if I'd need to start looking elsewhere.

October 2013

 

Chitting the seeds (essentially pre-sprouting seeds on a wet towel/paper) was working a treat and within the month I had 4 trays filled with various kinds of lettuce, spinach, Zucchini, Cucumbers, beetroots, Leeks, tomatoes, squash, broccoli, kale and Rainbow Silverbeet/chard and wanted to get them into the garden as soon as possible. The temperature was slowly coming down more and more so I was keen to try and give my seedlings the best chance to establish before the winter months kicked into high gear, but fighting with the weeds was proving to chew up a considerable amount of my time so things felt like they were progressing at a painfully slow pace. I'd look enviously across the grass at Shookinton's Garden which was overflowing with leafy greens and dream that mine could look so beautiful, but at that point it felt like I was spending so much time just trying to establishing the new plots and liberate the soil of weeds that I'd never get there.

At one point I foolishly began to let myself believe that I was almost finished with all the hard labour of clearing the soil.. then I began tilling the 6th plot and was slapped back into reality. The pile of rocks in the image above is just what I had pulled out of that small plot behind it and it's worth noting that in the past 2 years I've paid 6 day labourers, working a total of 4 days, just to clear the rocks, stones and rubbish from the soil. This pile simply represents what they "missed." 

 

Little Feather taking a tour of the recently completed Resurrection Garden

But all praise be to the Lord on high that there actually came a day in mid-November when I stood amongst the piles of freshly extracted rubbish and random debris, sweat on my brow and covered in compost from head to toe and realised that I'd finally done it; all 7 beds were ready for planting. It's hard to put into words and convey properly what that moment felt like, but after 2 years work, suffice to say it felt good! 

Early November 2013

I'd already planted some seedlings of tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, squash, zucchinis, beetroots and broccoli in 3 of the beds that had already been completed and most of them were coming along nicely. My cucumbers began trailing up a wire lattice I had drilled into the back wall and were just starting to form fruits, but the season was getting late and temperatures were dropping and it came to the point where I'd given up hope that they would ever grow big enough to harvest. Their final nail in the coffin was when I came out one morning and found half of the vines hanging dead with a hangman's noose around their necks.

You see, in their daily attempts to recover the downed kites that land on our grass, the kids who live over the garden wall throw rocks tied to lengths of string as far as they can into our property in a series of seemingly never ending an attempts to try and hook the crashed kites then pull them back over the wall. As the rocks are pulled back towards their owner, they drag across the grass, through the garden, occasionally hook onto something of mine and then with one final heave hoist parts of my garden high into the air where they generally become hooked on a nail where they are destined to remain. Even in the design phase I knew this was going to be a potential problem for everything that grows in my garden, but unless I want to be the kind of Scrooge who tells poor kids they can't try and get their kites back when they come down in our yard (and literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of kites come down in our yard each year) then it's just something I have to learn to let go of; even if it means regularly experiencing the loss of my plants. Just chalk it up to one of the many unique (and frustrating) challenges of gardening in Banaras.

Broccoli, Eggplant and Radishes

But much to Wild Flower's elation, by the end of November I had removed most of my seedlings from our house and gotten them into the ground. Sadly the weeds were still fighting their way back into control of any space I would neglect for more than a week or two but I'm taking the long view of my battle with the weeds and feel like I'm taking ground, especially since my straw was delivered and I started heavily mulching the beds. Sadly I have little of a positive nature to say about my rubbish saga (my lovely neighbours still toss any and all of their waste into my garden; be it plastics, organics or faecal) but Kya Karna heh! What's a guy to do?

 

Little Feather harvesting her Radishes

One of the seeds that I always get Little Feather to help me plant is Radishes. I figure the connection between planting a seed and 6 months later harvesting vegetables from it can be a difficult concept to lock in place for little ones and that's why Radishes are great; they germinate within a couple of days and you're harvesting them fully grown around 5 weeks later. And there's just something about watching your kids pulling up handfuls of beautiful shiny red radishes that just fills a papa's heart with glee! So if you're wanting to encourage your kids into the garden and looking for something to grow with them I'd encourage you to stick Radishes right at the top of your list, just above snow peas, non-hearting lettuces and cherry tomates. 

Late November 2013

When it got to the end of November the garden was looking like it was on the verge of kicking into high gear. I still had to be patient with many of the slow to mature crops but it was clear that the tomatoes, lettuces, radishes and broccoli were all thriving and I was genuinely enjoying every second of being out in the garden. I'd regularly grab one or both of the kids and a coffee and come and sit up there in the early mornings and try and enjoy the fact that my son, who had only slept a handful of hours, had once again woken up and started his day before the sun had risen. And you know what? When you're sitting in a place that twelve months ago was a barren wasteland but is now filled with crops that are thriving, it actually does make the mornings for this sleep deprived father just that little bit happier.

Running With The Bull..

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. 

It's (Really Not )Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas..

* It's beginning to look a lot like a Varanasi Christmas

Everywhere you go

Take a look at Manikarnika Ghat

Babbas on their mats

With sacred fires and cremation pyres aglow

It's beginning to look a lot like a Varanasi Christmas

 Winter coats on every goat

But the prettiest sight to see

Is the Paan stains that will be, on your own front wall

 

Some dhal and rice and a kite that flies

Is the wish of Padmabandhu Tiwari and Shri Priyanvad Raj Kumar

 

And Bangles of all colours that they'll throw at their brothers

 Is the hope of Saraswati and Somalakshmi Deepika Rai Vidya Kapoor

And Sadhu Ji could hardly wait to get back to sleep again

It's beginning to look a lot like a Varanasi Christmas

Monkey Caps on every child

And the ladies drying out the poo, which they'll burn to cook their food

Have less now because it's also on my shoe

It's beginning to look a lot like a Varanasi Christmas

Every man in a sparkling vest

But what will fill your heart with glee

Is the Paan stains that will be... on your own front wall

Have a Wonderful Christmas! 

Dedicated to our beloved Halfcocks Pariwar who the whole city is missing this Christmas!

*To the tune of Bing Crosby's 'It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas'

Fire Weed..

Six guys, a bottle of highly flammable liquid, a box of matches and something that needs destroying.. a winning combination!

Sitting just outside one of the entrances to the Resurrection Garden is a horrid weed which has proved to be the bane of my barefoot existence! It's thick and bushy with razor sharp spikes and it hates me. I have no doubt in my mind that it spends the majority of it's days just dreaming up new ways of slinging it's spikes deep into the souls of my feet. We hack it back to ground level every few months but sadly this has only served to encourage it, and so it simply grows back bigger and more obnoxious each time. Other attempts to kill it have all failed dismally and so the only option left was to dig it out from the roots, an effort that proved more fun than initially expected.

We had some sweet traveler cats come along to our Community Gardening afternoon here at the River Ashram who were keen to get their hands dirty. They're both pretty interesting characters; one a Mohawk wielding media designer from Finland, the other a French law student who is taking a break from his studies so he can do what all law students do on their break and ride a bicycle across North India then all the way back to France! (So far he's clocked up an impressive 2633kms!!)

They had been hard at work for a couple of hours with Byron (our 6'5" Aussie brother whose a part of our community) when I arrived home from a Christmas party and got on the scene. This was the first time I really got a clear picture of what we were up against. The root ball was massive (about as thick as my upper leg) and bunkered down very deep. They had already dug down a couple of feet through some super tough soil and the base of the root was nowhere to be seen. This was partly because it was still well below the surface, but also because they were busy stuffing paper and sticks and other flammable objects around the base of the root with the plan of burning it out.

I have to admit, I probably would have just kept digging - but being a guy, the thought of setting something ablaze is an option too hard to pass up. Thus Oodbliav went and grabbed a bottle of the most flammable liquid he had on hand and we went to work creating a fire ball worthy of a couple of quick photos.

We ended up keeping the flame going till well after dark and it will be interesting to see what's left of it in the morning. Part of me is concerned of what ghastly abomination it might transform into if we haven't succeeded in destroying it this time round, potentially some sort of flora poltergeist out for revenge, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

 

It's been an interesting experience crafting this post along with these photos as the more time I spend looking at them the more anthropomorphic they become. It's a bit like cloud gazing, the longer you look the more you end up seeing. So give yourself a couple of minutes to set your peepers on the above image and tell me you don't see a woman with her hands behind her back walking up a step! Or the fourth image from the top; the tall dude wearing the low rider pants and miming at firing an arrow into the air. Or the third image from the top; a baby elephant with his trunk raised high in the air with a parrot perched atop it. Or the fifth image from the top; a statue taken from Lisa McCunes' stock pile of Gold Logies (that was probably being used to prop up a kitty litter tray or serving some other similarly noble purpose). 

So unless I'm just loosing it (which is a definitely possibility - I do have 2 kids under the age of 3 and live in Varanasi) I'm keen to hear what you see when you look deep into the flames!

A Word About Poo..

I've had a bunch of comments now from lovely folk saying that they've expected/wanted/surprised I haven't already done a post about Poo.. Yes, I'm serious. And it's true that when you live in India it doesn't take long before the quality of your bowel movements becomes a fairly acceptable topic of conversation around the dinner table. Someone you know always has diarrhea or is blocked up and it's a safe bet that how someone's poo was, is also a good indication of how they're doing in general.

So I thought I'd quench those thirsts and offer a Poo Blog (but it's probably not quite what you're thinking).

A bag of human faeces caught in our Guava Tree

I've written on more than one occasion about how much rubbish finds its way over our fence and into our gardens and the process I go through in coming to terms with it. It's something that doesn't have a foreseeable solution so I just keep up my daily routine of picking up my neighbour's rubbish from my garden and tossing it into our bin.

But look, it's one thing to be picking up your neighbour's chip packets, broken plastic bangles or even used up batteries; of course it's a waste of my time and a pain to my heart, but it becomes a different ball game all together when you find yourself picking up bags full of crap!

3 in 1 day..  rough night..

Only recently I wandered up to the Resurrection Garden with Little Feather and Wild Foot and was greeted by the sight of a plastic bag, full of human poo, that had been launched over our fence and had come to rest on what was now a crushed tomato seedling (that I had planted only days earlier!). My wife and both kids had been sick and so it'd been an exhausting week and so to be honest, I wasn't in my finest form, but the sight of my dying tomato seedling underneath a poo filled plastic bag proved to be the straw that broke this camels back.

I began hurling out my tirade of frustration to the world in the best Hindi that I could manage under such circumstances. Many of my neighbours were on their balconies and roofs and the shouting of a hairy foreigner in his Pajamas quickly attracted the attention of all within ear shot. I felt a surge of conviction that this was the moment to let my neighbours know exactly what I thought of them! And so in a strong and ridiculous accent of an Australian trying to sound North Indian, I conjured up the best Hindi I could and managed to sputter out "I'm not happy!"

Look, it wasn't quite as profound as a Jed Bartlett speech.. In fact, I'm sure it was rather humorous for my neighbours to see me flustered and thus completely unable to string a simple sentence together, but I did manage to ham it up a bit and get across the frustration of my vegetable garden being used as their toilet. 

I proceeded to ask who was creator of my latest inheritance, and it was like a scene from a movie with every finger confidentially pointing towards every other house but their own, and so this offender remains at large (though I suspect all my neighbours have been guilty of this at some point). 

Wild Flower often tells me that I should just return it via airmail (ie; straight in through the lounge room windows) but we're all to aware that in any war involving flying bags of faeces, well, no one really comes out victorious do they (especially when they command all the high ground!).

But it does underscore a more serious issue that's wide spread here in India, and that is that 2.5 billion people on our planet currently lack access to a toilet or basic sanitation. Only the other day a friends whose lived here for many years told me that Germany had given Varanasi a 100 million dollar grant to provide adequate sewage infrastructure to the city, yet where has this money gone? Primarily into the back pockets of high ranking city officials, who I guess are kind of like the contents of a sewage pipe when you consider that their greed and corruption continues to deny meeting the basic needs of those living in extreme poverty.

So now I'm trying to reorient my mind. To see that inherent within each plastic bag of poo that's crushing a new seedling in my garden is the out workings of the corruption and evil that results in basic human needs not being met. And look, I'm happy to admit that I'm not there yet. It's not easy, in fact it's still soul crushing to see so much hard work being shat on (literally) by the very people I'm eager to share my harvests with, especially when they can clearly see where it's going and knowing that there are other disposal options, but trying to see the bigger picture and is helping me reconcile some of the heart ache I go through each and every time I discover a fresh deposit. 

While doing some reading about this issue of sanitation, I came across the above clip which encouraged me (and gave me a good laugh) that work is being done to address the issue of inadequate sanitation, and even if I can't imagine the process being even close to completed in my lifetime, it's good to know that bringing an end to the war of flying bags of poo is on the agenda!

Acoustic At Night..

One truly great thing about the international, long term traveler crowd, is that there is a disproportionately high number of amazingly talented and creative folk. It makes sense though; those in business and commerce work hard to pay off their li'l boxes on the hillside and so by and large, any time for creative pursuits and travel are relegated to those few measly portions of time known as annual leave. Compare that to many musicians, artists, dancers, storytellers or performers, whose ambitions and dreams could not sit further afield, where the other side of the horizon is the next real destination and the contents of a well worn suitcase the only worldly possession, freeing those who pursue it the time, space and heart to cultivate their craft.

Every once in a while, we at the River Ashram throw open our doors to host a night of celebration of creativity, community and the arts. On the first pages of our sacred Scriptures we see God breathing beauty into existence through all of his creative acts, and as his children we wish to reflect back and celebrate that creativity and beauty and so we invite people to come and bless each other through the sharing of their talents and skills.

Some people chose to perform their craft as an individual, others lead the circle in something communal, but considering the caliber of those present often it takes just one person to light the spark that sets the entire night of fire. So often the vast diversity of backgrounds and nationalities means that the performances are a real sharing of unique cultures while the jam sessions are this insane fusion of east and west and everything in between. Just off the top of my head I can think of Guitars, Sitars, Sarods, Dulcimers, Bansuri, Glockenspiels, Tibetan throat singing, Harmoniums, Ukuleles, Harmonicas, Ouds, Dholaks, Didgeridoos, Djembes, Tabla, Banjos and most importantly Triangles, all getting a work out around the circle at one time or another.

 
One of my truly favourite memories from an Acoustic Night was late last year when I was leading a Yeshu Bhajan called Satchit Ananda Eh Namo Namah. It's a deep and moody Bhajan that works as a call and response and so I was singing and playing my guitar accompanied by 20 or so other folk who were singing and playing a collection of the previously mentioned instruments. We were all singing our hearts out when from out of the darkness came the booming reverberations of a tattoo covered Japanese hippy brother playing a Didgeridoo. It was one of those beautiful moments that felt like it captured so much of the color of my life in just one special moment.

The most recent Acoustic Night was only in the previous week and it was without a doubt the most unique one we've hosted so far. The night began rather slowly but as chai started flowing and the crowd began warming up, the vibe began heading in a direction that I could never have predicted. In the past there have always been lots of original songs, many performances on traditional Indian instruments, plenty of covers and even the occasional poem, belly dance or fire twirl. But never before have I witnessed the entire circle requesting, belting out and dancing along with old Bluegrass and Gospel Spirituals that continued into the wee hours of the morning. The night was even capped off with an a cappella song done in a round! Truly the most bizarre yet incredibly beautiful ending to an Acoustic night that I've ever been a part of.

So if you're a performer of any kind and you're heading through Banaras be sure to hit us up and join us for our next night, especially if your heart is warmed by the company of a bunch of sweet hippies from the 4 corners of the globe, dancing round a campfire and singing them ole Gospel Spirituals. Sure sounds like a party to me!