My last morning in Benares(Varanasi), I was up with the aarti. I climbed into blue and could already feel the shift.
I headed down to the river at Meer ghat(bathing steps at the river) where my GH was. The first boatsman that approached was the young Rahual Sahani, 14, and in the business of rowing visitors and pilgrims this way and that at sunrise and sunset on the Ganges since he was 8. This morning his father handed him over the oars, so he pointed to his boat and asked me - how much? I agreed 80 rupees($1.75) for a half hour knowing it was high but he had on a blue shirt and his boat was perfectly blue. I asked him first "let me do anything while we are in the boat?" and second "are you a good photographer?" He agreed on both. I brought along some paper, brushes,blue chalk and blue watercolor.
Entering the boat I was really entering the sacred realm of thousands of years as this river at this place has cradled billions of such crafts and trillions of such passengers. To begin I had to lay down for some time on the lower planks of the boat to listen and feel this doorway into Time.
As we began to head upstream the poems of tides and waves, ripples and wakes were being wrote across the akash of my mind. Dipping my brush into the Ganga, I began to paint Rahual's portrait as he spoke about his life with the river. He pointed to his house, there, the one with the yellow curtain. Other curious boatsmen, flower wallahs and touristships began to drift near....we were the blue satellite drifiting across the liquid cosmos and we were happiness. He set course for some of the magnificent architectural landscapes along the shores of Varanasi as he thought I would like to paint them. I fell into their golden edfices, their hollow eyes of mysterious chambers, romantic balconies and jutting towers. Though I have been here before I was seeing the ghats for the first time through another's eyes. The colors at the edges blurred and the calm grey of the river was all pervasive. We crossed the river long after my half hour had passed. We laughed about it.
I entered the river slowly allowing these calm waters to soak each and every thread of my jumper. This water is notoriously polluted and religiously the catch all for many who have died. The sand soft and cool in my toes is mixed with the ash of infinite bodies of the deceased who have made it luckily to these final shores. There on the other side there are numerous carcasses: those who have lived and those remnants of sunken idols that have been fervently worshipped.
Here is the river Styx and I have again passed through Being into mythology upon her course.
I am the boat
I am the boatman
I am the river
I am water
