Day 2 of the 3/5 challenge…. Varanasi, 2006….. I will always be grateful for the magic of India….. I have made some of my greatest friends there, and It is an honor to share just some of that experience here…. Tonights pics are from my time in Varanasi…. 1: SHANTI 2: MANIKARNIKA 3: “SHE WHO IS GOING ON A COSMIC JOURNEY” SHANTI is a portrait of a gentle-but-loud and energetic Bengali poet/ innkeeper who modeled himself after Rabindranath Tagore. He lived in Tokyo throughout the 50’s and 60’s as a visiting scholar at one of the universities, published volumes of poetry, and had many gallery shows of his own paintings. During that time, Shanti met his wife-to-be, Kumiko, but he always followed events back in his native country. The 1970’s and 80’s turned into a violent period for some travelers to India, particularly in the mysterious, almost medieval-like, cavernous, stone alleyways of Varanasi. Travelers often were reported missing or found murdered, some even killed just for body parts. Greatly disturbed by this, Shanti intended to open a safe haven for the Japanese travelers only. Relocating his new family to Varanasi, he and Kumiko opened a guesthouse on the bank of the Ganges and offered free room and board until eventually the government forced him in to charging a nominal fee if he intended to stay in business. They’ve since been protecting travelers for over two decades. These days, Shanti often sits by his window in the living room, still writing, reading, and watching the morning pink sun rise and become pale yellow over the Ganges, and rattling, ranting, and raving on in Hindi, Japanese, or English as a genius-madman poet full of stories and pictures from his past. All throughout, he’ll interrupt himself to yell cautionary instructions at every traveler coming and going as if we’re all his children. When I met Shanti, he was gracious enough to allow me to stay at his guesthouse as the only Westerner. For whatever reason, he must have taken pity on me! From his place, I would then go out each day to sketch. Shanti then started seeing me come back each afternoon/evening with sketches under my arm and asked me to sit with him by his throne at the window. Showing him the portrait and location sketches I had done, he was inspired to create poetic names for them immediately. He then asked me to paint his portrait as well. Days later, with his huge robe, sandals, Rabindranath Tagore amulet, and an enormous walking stick, Shanti-- this beautiful being of light-- then took me on a tour across town-- throughout Varanasis cavernous alleys on foot and then by rickshaw-- in search of the only color copier nearby… Far away from the center of town, far out in the brush, 45 minutes away….. And after waiting out the neighborhoods daily power outage that could have taken forever(!), he then brought me to his friend’s tiny one-room condo surrounded by cow-dung fields…. As we entered the tiny condo surrounded by the earthly-grey-brown dung, the fields sparkled…. from bright, jewel-colored saris worn by beautiful women whose job it is to turn the fresh cow dung into patties so they could bake, dry out, and eventually be turned into fuel….. There, in the middle of the dung-fields, Shanti, his friend, and I sat, drinking chai for hours, discussing politics, art, philosophy, and the world at large…. PORTRAIT OF A BABY GIRL A.K.A. “SHE WHO IS GOING ON A COSMIC JOURNEY” (as named by Shanti-the-Poet), Watercolor, 10” x 14”, Varanasi My daily routine in Varanasi was to wake up around 630am, watch the red sun rise from behind the cold fog over the Ganges, listen to the quiet chop of oars breaking the water, take a quick shower, then walk up towards Manikarnika. There, I was given permission and invited to sketch all day on a local Brahman’s bench that was just outside of the cremation areas, without having to move. I then made friends with one of the Ganges ferrymen, Lalo, who also based himself right there offshore, prepping his boat, always the first person to greet me in the morning…... One particular morning that I had sat down on the bench, a couple fires were blazing in the distance and nobody was around but Lalo and me. At the precise moment that I had taken out my sketch materials, a man came racing up in front of us cradling a bundle of blankets the size of an American football. Looking flustered, he ran to the water and I knew right away what he was carrying. The only people that don’t get cremated at Manikarnika are lepers, holy men, and babies. They are dropped with stones into the Ganges instead. One of Lalo’s fellow ferrymen suddenly appeared, ready to take the boat, and he and the flustered man anxiously started to tie the tiny bundle to a small board, tying rocks to it also. Then, even more stones were loaded onto the boat. I knew that if I was ever going to have the chance, this might be the only opportunity. Putting aside any moral doubts, I asked Lalo what my chances would be. Not understanding my English, he didn’t know what I was asking specifically but he could tell what I was interested in. Approaching the man with an offer, it was reluctantly accepted, and while nobody else was around, nobody was watching, and everything was silent and still, they pulled back the blanket to show me the angelic face of this tiny baby girl, no older than a day. Her eyes were still open but she was as lifeless as could be. I could swear I was looking at a baby doll. My heart pounded but I was able to withhold all my external emotion, and proceeded to move as fast as I possibly could. 15 minutes into it the man covered her again and snatched her away, giving her to the ferrymen to take out and drop. As I watched them blur into the low-lying mist over the Ganges’ middle, Lalo explained to me who she was. This baby girl was found dead and abandoned in an alleyway a very short time before, and brought to the local hospital anonymously. The man who brought her here was only a hospital worker, not her father as I imagined. Lalo then explained that dead baby girls are brought down very often, and that she could have been sick, could have been born that way, could have been killed by her father for not being a son, or killed by her mother for the same reason. He commented that it’s very, very sad, but common. As I heard the splash and realized she had neither name nor parents looking after her, I felt an incredible emotional impact. I wondered how many others were under us, forgotten, swallowed by the earth, either by accident or for whatever willful reasons, with no record of them ever having existed on this plane… yet they did, and do. And despite the weight of any moral doubts I had, along with any morbidity or absurdity that may have come with my decision, I’m glad that I could at least preserve and honor her memory and beautiful face in some way.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 03:19:55 +0000
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