My Dip in the Ganges

I twisted through Varanasi’s suffocating maze, side-stepping skinny cows and men on motorcycles, their mouths blood-red from the local chew.

Silhouettes in shop windows. Music blasting from phones. The bells of the temple clanging.

A woman wrapped in pink silk, walked under the aura of a street lamp. A man covered in ash, blew smoke from his nostrils. A monkey chewed on a cable above.

Six men bombed through carrying a corpse on a bamboo ladder, the corpse wrapped in a sheet and covered in flowers. More people were following, banging drums and chanting.

I followed the train of people down a tight passageway, spilling out onto the concrete steps leading to the river’s edge. Groups of women lit candles upon lotus leaves, setting them adrift on the river’s glassy, oily surface.

People were everywhere, but my eyes fell on the columns of smoke rising from stacks of wood. Corpses were burning in the center.

A charred corpse, lifted in pieces, placed half-cremated into the river. The corpses were scented with spices but there was a smell lurking.

Further down the embankment, my friend Christian sat on a low wall with his camera ready. He had secured a boatman to take him out once I got into the river. He gave me a nod, before climbing into the wooden skiff.

I was in a state of terror. But I had no choice. It was the end of our movie. I took comfort in the locals bathing in the water, dumping cupfuls of river over themselves, gesturing with emotion.

In my underwear now, I walked down the steps and into the river. Floating on my back, wavelets tapping my temples, pooling in my ears, under a pink dome of sky, the reflection of the ancient city shimmering on the water all around me.

It’s here that language leaves you. A poignant happiness? A blissful melancholy? A sense that there is something going on outside our perception, and that a lot of it is benevolent?

It was this that I kept in mind back home, staying at my sister’s house. I dropped down to 125 lbs. I was wasting away with giardia; my stool a drip the color of the river.