I’m in Varanasi, one my favorite places in India. I’m staying in Assi Ghat where I lived when I was here in 2006. It’s the southern most ghat on the Ganges.

Each section, referred to as a ghat, has steps that lead down to the river.

One of my primary reasons for returning to Varanasi, also known by it’s ancient name Benares, is to photograph each ghat from the shores of the river, up the steps, and through the winding alleyways that lead into the bustle of the city.

A project that could take some time with the multiple ghats, I didn’t get to it during the six weeks I was here last time because the sadhus (holy men) came to town after the Kumbh Mela gathering. Instead I spent time getting to know and photographing them.

Another great way to see the ghats is from a boat. When I switched hotel rooms the morning after my arrival, my luggage was fetched and moved by way of boat. The morning glide offered a perspective of life on the ghats from the eye of the Ganga.

Flying kites is a favorite past-time with the children playing on the ghats. These boys were offering a slightly different variation then I’ve seen before with their knickers hanging low.

The pollution levels in the holy river have reached staggering proportions; it has been declared unfit for human bathing. It is however, a practice that continues unabated; both natives and pilgrims alike partake of its sacred waters. Bathing and laundry soaps have been banned, but that does not stop them from being used. The Ganga washes bodies and clothes, as well as sins, dishes and water buffalo.

One of the most important applications of ‘Ma Ganga’ is the release of the deceased. It is believed that moksha (liberation from the cycle of rebirth) is attained if the Ganges is one’s final resting place. Unfortunately, bodies are only partially burned when put into the river, adding to the pollution problem.

There is also industrial waste, urban waste water, and raw sewage contributing to the contaminated waters. The Ganga, the most populous river basin in the world, has become the breeding ground for 1.5 billion litres of sewage a day, from the 692 villages, towns, and cities that deposit into it. Dr. Sudhirender Sharma, in his paper The Ganga, says ‘The river – an ancient symbol of purity and cleansing has become a great open sewer along much of it’s length.’

Yet, with all the pollution and impurity the Ganga has swirling in her waters, to be near the river creates a tranquility, a sense of timelessness. But Sharma and others campaigning to save the Ganga, wonder for how much longer.

Stories are everywhere in India. Sorrowful stories on the end of outstretched hands that follow me as I walk past them in the street, grabbing onto me in desperation. Each of them I want to record and tell the world. I imagine what I’d say, as I, like everyone else, simply walks by.

A few nights ago two young boys – maybe 5-7 years of age – followed me to my hotel. They may have seen my ten rupee peanut purchase from a street vendor. When they asked for money, I opened the bag – fashioned from yesterday’s newspaper – and poured what amount would fit into their small, dirty hands. A few flights up to my room I asked myself why I didn’t just give them the entire bag. It won’t solve the problem, but it may alleviate a small bit of their hunger for awhile.

They seemed grateful for the amount they received unlike the woman with the child perched on her hip who asked if I’d buy her baby a banana. She angrily rejected it when I handed it to her, saying she wanted more. One of the tricks of beggary is to sell the items back to the vendor, at half-price. One banana would not yield enough, so she refused it. I thought back to the banana incident in Eugene, when a man outside the store where I shop asked me for a dollar. I told him I didn’t have a dollar but could give him a banana. He snidely said that he had asked for money, not a banana, telling me that one day I too may be in his position, to which I responded, “and I’ll be grateful for a banana’.

On occasion I will give money, but I prefer to give an offering of food. It fairly quickly separates those who are hungry from those who have a different appetite to feed. In India, the ‘beggar mafia‘ puts people into the streets to do their bidding for them. In an attempt to garner more sympathy babies are put into young woman’s arms, or worse, arms or other body parts are amputated. Not wanting to support that, I try not to give in the form of money. To do so keeps this deplorable system thriving.

Yesterday I saw a woman with a horribly disfigured face. I think my shock may have registered in my expression, but all I could do was walk past her, though the image of her wouldn’t leave me. Was she the victim of bride burning or did the beggar mafia do this to her? Was it an accident? The humane part of me wanted to sit next to her on the stoop and listen to her story. The skeptic in me doubted we could speak each other’s language, and by the shape of her damaged mouth, I doubt she could easily talk. Or that she’d want to tell a stranger her story.

I sometimes save scraps to feed the street dogs though the ones I’ve approached of late have not seemed very interested. When sprinkling pieces of chapati (Indian flat bread) onto the street for them they move their head towards my hands, more interested in being pet than fed. The other night one of them followed me to the entrance of my hotel, reminding me of the dog I befriended when I stayed in this area (The Tibetan Colony) a few years ago. The small, demure orangish-colored mutt would catch the rage of the hotel manager when he’d follow me up the steps to where I was staying. I’d hang out with and feed him a few times a day, mostly buttery Tibetan bread, though on the night I left I bought him 30 rupees worth of meat. I’ve kept my eye out for that dog since I’ve been here, but I’m sure he’s long gone. The lifespan of homeless dogs isn’t a long one, though the dogs in the colony are less feral and generally more approachable than many dogs in India.

The story I’ve been working on this past week is of a mom who had to fight to save her twin daughters from being one of India’s 50 million missing. I met with Dr. Mitu Khurana and her daughters, who are now four years of age, last Saturday. I’ve been busily transcribing the taped interview and adding subtitles to the video footage. I’ve nearly finished the video, after a lot of newbie trial and error, and will be working on finishing the interview to put it into story format. I am also putting a blog together with a chronicle of the articles that have been written on her, and a place where people can access information and updates on her case.

I think I’ll take a break from it today though since it’s my birthday. I’ll not have the candles to make a wish with, but it’s always the same wish – for peace on earth. Some of the wisest words spoken come from a quote by Mother Teresa who said ‘If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other’. The question begs, when and why did we forget this, and what will help us to remember?

Irom Sharmila, from the state of Manipur, in northeast India, has not forgotten. She is on the tenth year of a fast to protest against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which allows the army to use force, arrest or shoot anyone on the mere suspicion that someone has committed or is about to commit a crime. The act, which was imposed in 1980, has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. As a personal protest Irom stopped taking food and water. Considered to be suicidal, she is imprisoned in a hospital in Delhi where she is forced fed through a tube. Her protest has not changed the situation in Manipur, but that has not deterred her from continuing. Rather Irom says, ‘we all come here with a task to do. It is my bounden duty’.

Drums made of styrofoam and sticks, these boys were playing a mad beat on the streets of Delhi.

Being back in India is both surreal and familiar. My friend Sonam said that when he saw me at the airport I was walking as if India was my second home. Familiarity does not however remove the feeling of being a stranger in a foreign land, especially in a metropolis like Delhi, with its frenzied pace and relentless motion, and the impersonal feeling this gives. Nor does it hide my differentness as evidenced by the penetrating stares.

With each trip, I continue to learn how to use the Metro – Delhi’s subway system – with it’s vast number of rail lines, platforms and stations. And passengers. Yesterday I waited for the metro to arrive in the crowded platform. The uniformed man blowing directives through a whistle tried to get everyone to form single lines, to no avail. Few paid attention and those who were close to the front did not want to lose their place. It seemed everyone had to be somewhere in a hurry because when the metro arrived there was a mad rush to get onboard and secure one’s place before the doors closed shut.

Less than five minutes later another train arrived. In one giant pushing motion, squeezed tightly together as one entity, we piled onto the subway, everyone jostling to find a place to stand and hang on. My arm was curled around the waist of a young man to reach the pole in the center of the aisle, where I found a space, among the other hands, to hang on. A few minutes into the ride, a gloved hand started caressing mine. I moved it down the pole, the hand followed and continued its caress. When I looked over in the direction it seemed to be coming from I caught the eyes of a man in a leather jacket and gloves. I again moved my hand, and close enough to someone else’s so that if he continued, he would have to be caressing both hands. The man to his right probably wouldn’t have appreciated it, so he stopped.

India is crowded, chaotic and alive! The streets are a virtual panoply of activity – whirring sewing machines, haircutting and shaving, children playing, men sleeping, women laundering, dogs scavenging, beggars begging, food cooking,vendors hawking, brooms sweeping, metallurgists pounding, fires burning. It never sleeps. All night long from my fourth story hotel room I hear the roar of traffic, the blare of horns. Fortunately it stops once the dreams start, but sometimes when I wake I feel the dust of the streets in my eyes. And I wonder if I slept at all.

Enroute to India, and about to be in Delhi, I am posting a story that is particularly troubling.

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India has less than a year before the start of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

Perna Suri reports from the Indian capital.

Indian workers allege exploitation

This video is a collection of photos from my second visit to Pahalgam in 2005. It’s one of my favorite places; the people are beautiful and the landscape is gorgeous.

The Kashmiris are dying for their freedom (azad), yet a resolution seems a long way off. Neither India nor Pakistan want to relinquish their stronghold on a state that wants to be independent from both countries decades old politics, which many feel are related to water rights. Fighting in the region has worsened since the Mumbai attacks.

I hope to return to Pahalgam one day and gift these amazing people with their portraits!

After seeing the film Slumdog Millionaire a few weeks ago, I felt not jubilant, but disturbed. Having been to India five times and (collectively) spending 1.5 years in various locales, I’ve experienced the fascinating, difficult country firsthand.

Poverty is ever-present. The slums are not always hushed into dark pockets of the cities; they may exist alongside opulence on busy boulevards. Though, some slum areas, as shown in the film, are being leveled with high-rise complexes put in their place, further displacing the marginalized. And this is cause for concern.

A good friend of mine, a native of Calcutta, recently told me this in a correspondence:

In India the situation is getting from bad to worse. There is NO accountability at all. The new change now is that many of the downtroddens are rising up to protest / to demand . The Adivasis are rising. The Maoists movement is spreading like wild fire in India. They have support bases in Nepal and Bangladesh. They are as bad as the criminals in other parties. We have lots of political parties with all kinds of names, but basically the goal is the same – ” to come to power and to remain in power ” at any cost.

In Delhi the slums are being destroyed and people are being displaced in preparation for the 2010 Commonwealth Games:

India razes slums, leaves poor homeless

Maiming children, as they did in the film by blinding a boy, is not simply a movie phenomenon nor is it a rare occurrence. If a begging person is missing part of a limb or if they are blind, more money may be extracting from the unwitting. It plays on our emotions.

During my last trip to India I had a personal encounter with a young boy who was a victim of intentional maiming. I was walking down Main Bazaar in Delhi when he spotted me. Westerners with money enough to travel to India are prime targets.

He came running towards me and then trotted alongside me, parroting “fifty rupees!, fifty rupees!”. It was the desolate look in his eyes that first caught my attention. Seeing his missing hand explained the expression.

The end of his arm was covered with a clean, stark white bandage. It stood in sharp contrast to the layers of dirt on his face, feet and clothes.

I stopped walking and asked him “who did this to you?” Both enraged and haunted by this child’s circumstance, I continued to try talking with him but he only knew enough english to beg for money, not converse with a foreigner.

I did not give the child 50 rupees but settled on ten in exchange for his portrait. I felt a twinge of guilt about that, but I knew I would not be allowed one without compensation.

I saw the boy a few days later in nearly the same stretch of Main Bazaar. However, this time his bandage was bloody and dirty. He was jumping up and down with his mutilated arm in the air, trying to get the attention of a (western) couple who were in conversation and paying no attention to him.

A month later, in Dharamsala, I met a man who had also seen this boy when he was in Delhi. He told me he saw him squeezing the end of his arm to make the bandage bloodier, and hopefully, more profitable.

Those who’ve not spent time in India wouldn’t necessarily know what parts of the film Slumdog Millionaire are fact versus fiction, though it’s well known that India is home to a wealth of impoverished people.

The fiction is the fairy-tale ending, and the sense it gives moviegoers, that despite deep poverty and dangerous conditions, the people are still smiling happy, even dancing for joy in the railway station, a place where many street children make their home.

I think this illusion gives us permission to go back to life as usual after the credits roll and the curtain falls. Their situation and suffering is not something we need concern ourselves with. Besides, they’re happy. Aren’t they?

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See: Slumdog Millionaire’s child actors still live in ‘grinding poverty’ in Mumbai

Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, two of the child actors in “Slumdog Millionaire,” are still living in the slums of Mumbai, despite the film’s $14 million budget and worldwide success. Ali earned 500 British pounds ($710) for one year’s work and Ismail earned 1700 pounds ($2414), “less than many Indian domestic servants“:

Both children were found places in a local school and receive £20 a month for books and food. However, they continue to live in grinding poverty and their families say they have received no details of the trust funds set up in their names. Their parents said that they had hoped the film would be their ticket out of the slums, and that its success had made them realise how little their children had been paid.

There are three ayurvedic clinics in the tiny district of Bhagsu that offer pancha karma. I’ve recently met a few patients of the Asho clinic presently receiving treatment. One of them revealed that she feels it is very aggressive, that there is no sense of sympathy from the doctor for how exhausted she feels. She is being given a second dose of the diarrhea medication because the doctor of the clinic does not feel that eleven bowel movements was significant enough. She’s understandably, not happy about that, and at this point just hoping that she will come out on the other side of it feeling renewed and whole.

I also had a chat with a patient I had met at Siby’s who had seven days of basti treatment, followed by the therapeutic diarrhea medication. She said the cramping pain she experienced, that began as soon as she took the medication, was unbearable, and that she’ll never do it again. She looked as exhausted as she said she felt.

Friends have been curious to know how I am feeling post-pancha karma. If I notice any improvements in my health. I think I am still in the convalescence period; I’m tired, though my level of energy is quite high in comparison to what is was during treatment. My digestive/eliminative system was sluggish the first few days, though Siby informed me that was normal. I took a dose of the ayurvedic formula triphala the third night, a combination of three fruits that have a cleansing action. It is said to scrape ama (toxins) from the body. It seemed to help.

Thus far, I’ve noticed one thing. I’ve been able to stand in the sun without my eyes burning, indicative that the treatment benefited liver function, since the health of the eyes is related to the health of the liver. Other then that, nothing extraordinary, yet.

Undergoing a pancha karma program requires fortitude. While nine days felt the most I could endure, it is not enough time to address chronic health issues. Per Ayurveda recommendations, seasonal cleansings are ideal. And fasting one day per week.

Regarding my review on the administration of the treatment.

One essential ingredient in any healing program is the amount of heart the staff puts into their work. The heart of Siby’s staff is sincere and caring. From the beginning to the end. But there were times in betwixt the start and finish when their inconsistency weakened their proficiency.

With the massages, maximum benefit is offered when there are two practitioners, each working on one side of the body, both in synchronistic rhythm. However, during the massages I received the synchronicity was often missing. Some of the movements were sloppy, careless. Yet – from my personal knowledge of pancha karma – I think the therapists have been well trained. The problem seemed to be fatigue. Usha had been suffering from health problems during the duration of my treatment. And when the roster is full, patients are scheduled on the hour, with no reprieve between treatments. Some of the massages are rigorous, requiring a good deal of strength and energy. With no time to rest between sessions, there is no time for them to catch their breath. The rhythm gets scattered.

While finishing my final meal at the clinic, my program complete, I was asked by two female patients if I was happy with the treatment. They told me they were not feeling satisfied with the massage because the therapists’ movements were not harmonized. Siby walked in on our conversation and was apprised of the matter. He said he would speak with them, and I heard that the next day, the massages were much improved.

Another concern, for me, is the issue of hygiene. When I brought it to Siby’s attention that I thought some of the pancha karma materials may be used on more than one patient, he said it was not true, that it was not possible. It seemed he was not open to feedback of this nature though he did ask one of the therapists about it, who explained it away. The following day, I noticed some changes.

While the table cloth is renewed between patients, the same one remains in the steam box and there isn’t one on the chair patients sit naked on during the head massage. Though commonplace in India, this level of sanitation is difficult to our western sensitivities.

And finally, it would have been helpful if written information was given prior to treatment. What to expect. What is considered normal, possible problems. Though the doctor was always available to answer questions or concerns, daily doctor-patient interaction was missing. For me, it would offered reassurance, an important element when undergoing treatment, especially when it’s a new, rather intensive experience, like pancha karma.

It sounds luxurious to have a one-hour wash of warm milk continuously poured over the body, but by this point in the treatment, it felt more like work than relaxation. My reserves were hitting bottom, it all felt all-consuming. What kept me energized enough to get myself to the clinic four times daily is in the knowledge that in the end, I’ll emerge rejuvenated. I hope.

The morning milk treatment was followed by an afternoon of two therapies. The first was the same treatment as in the second phase of pancha karma, where hot oil is drizzled into a makeshift well on the body; this time it was on my low back. This was followed by one of the most beneficial of the karma’s, the basti or medicated enema. It is especially indicated in Vata constitution or derangement, since the colon is the main site of Vata. Each day was a bit different in terms of the quantity and formula of the basti. Of all the treatments that were administered, the basti proved to be the most energizing. Afterwards, I felt a few sparks of life returning. What joy!

The final day, after the pancha karma was complete, I was prescribed an ayurvedic herbal concoction to be taken at bedtime. It’s action – to induce therapeutic diarrhea. This insures that the impurities that were loosened during the treatment are swiftly eliminated from the body. My experience did not, thankfully, match what the doctor described I could expect, namely 10-15 movements that may last most of the night. For me it was simple and fairly quick. Most everyone else I’ve spoken with has had the latter experience.

It’s been three days since the treatment ended. Each day I feel a little more energy. To be honest, I think some of this can be attributed to the liberation I feel with being on the other side of it now. I was mostly confined to my room and the clinic for nearly two weeks; now I feel free!

Siby explained that after pancha karma the body is open and in some ways this is when the healing begins. Therefore it is important to maintain a healthy diet (preferably the same one as during the treatment for the first few weeks) and to take care not to do anything to exertion, not to get overheated. This cancels out the few other destinations I considered before returning home next week, since the temperatures in both of those places are well above 100 degrees. Just the 12-hour bus travel from here to Delhi will prove taxing, unless I decide to splurge and fly back. It may be worth it; the trip from here is an arduous one.

I originally started this series of posts on my pancha karma treatment to do a review of Siby’s. I do have some concerns and criticisms which I’ll put in a separate, final post.