Today we spend most of the day resting, reading, walking around in the labyrinth of alleys and sitting along the ghats. Early morning you can see people bathing and numerous mini companies washing laundry in the Ganges. This image could be from another time, all of them stanging knee deep in water scrubbing the pile of clothes on a wash board… We are amazed at how clean everything ends up and how neatly the laundry is layed out to dry on every surface close to the water.
The day passes by quickly and for the evening we have decided to go and see a movie that we have seen posted ever since we have arrived in India called «Taare zaamen par». It is based on the relationship of a school teacher played by Aamir Khan and a young boy named Ishaan who suffers from dislexia.
http://www.realbollywood.com/news/2007/12/taare-zaamen-par-movie-review.html
I think going to see a movie at least once while traveleing in India is quite an event. We ask at the hotel reception which movie theater they would recommend to us and how to get there. We leave by bicyle rickshaw shortly after to have enough time to get there before dark. What no one told us was that today is the 3rd and last day of a Muslim procession of the death of one of the prophets…
Traffic is pretty blocked and we see a few processions pass by the main streets with followers of all ages. We don’t think much about it as we pass by and continue on our way. We have not taken many bicycle rickshaws on our trip and forget that they usually take tiny streets and alleys to be away from the traffic… We enter the little streets that keep getting smaller. There are more and more people and one procession after the other is heading towards the main street. As usual there are only men in the processions all holding onto a long and colorfully decorated pole. Some even perform demonstrations of sword fighting while others are frantically drumming themselves into a trance it seems…
We feel a little out of place… It seems we have entered the Muslim area of Varanasi. We both have our hair tied as usual, but now feel that the Muslim men are looking at us and that we should perhaps cover our hair with a scarf too… Our driver is a bit overwhelmed with the attention we are drawing to ourselves, but keeps going. He does not seem to think much about it and continues to move through the crowd, telling people to to get out of the way, despite everyone telling him to turn around. This problem comes from the fact that we are sitting on bicycle rickshaw alot higher up and everyone can see us coming from far away…
Then all of a sudden a young man comes up to Carmen and touches her breasts. Before we realize what happened he is gone… I wish this would not have happened to her… These kind of overexcited crowds remind me of my unpleasant experience 4 years ago in New Dehli...We have enough and demand the driver to stop immediately and let us wait until the processions have gone by. We are both a bit shocked at what just happened. Carmen was also very lucky having ALL her valuables including her passport in her small backpack… That is one of the reasons I always travel with a money belt where my passport and big cash is hidden. It just feels safer somehow. We stand by a house and turn ourselves the other way so no one can tell we are foreigners with the scarf over our hair. The processions continue for a while and some drummers stop close by to us. We can’t help watching them feeling the beats getting faster and faster... I try to see where the women are. Some are inside their homes looking out of the window or watching from the balconies. No woman is a crazy as us to be standing in the streets. I can understand that alot better now, we had nothing to do there. But how could we have imagined something like that to happen, when we were just on our way to see a movie on a bicycle rickshaw…
When it finally gets calmer we tell the driver to move on to a BIGGER road only from now on. It takes just a few more minutes to get to the movie theater. Standing in front of the ticket booth we decide that all we want is just want to go back to our room and have a quiet dinner. We head for the motor rickshaws this time and find out who is going our way. All of them are full or pull long faces saying that everything is blocked with the processions. Finally after asking around for a while we come across a driver that agrees. The only problem is that his motor won’t start. We feel bad and begin to leave thinking of taking another rickshaw. He must be quite desperate, because he calls us back saying… it will work in a few minutes. And soon enough we are on our way. He brings us to the same spot we were on the first day where only bicycle rickshaws can continue. We pay him a bit more than necessary for his kindness and go on with the bicycle rickshaw at the price he has negociated. He absolutely does not want us to pay more than necessary! With some reluctance the driver agrees and soon we are back at the hotel. What an end to our day… I guess we will see the movie on DVD when we are back in Switzerland.
