Krishna, Rama, Shiva, Ganesh, Durga--all the countless lords and goddesses of a Vedic past, dating back thousands and thousands of years--danced in all the brown eyes tumbling by me. Even in many of the lifeless eyes, so pervasive in India, there glinted a hope of new energy.
Beneath a heaven exploding with lightning, the tumbling river of humanity and its many tributaries flashed intermittently into countless sharply-contoured details: ragged vagrants huddled between crumbling temple columns, broken-spirited horses, bent-back dogs, scavenging sows scurrying ecstatically from one littered shop front to another, their little piglets scrambling to keep up.

In the darkness following each flash of lightning the vermillion tikka dots and candy-colored stripes on the foreheads of the pilgrims glowed with an eerie vividness. Like sailors with
freshly-tattooed anchors, they wore their beacons proudly. It was their outward proof, along with their exhilaration, that they have journeyed somewhere special.

Later, while slogging through flooded streets in search of a non-existent hotel bed, the haunting image of a pretty child leapt at me just before another crack of thunder. Behind a smiling face that could have been from a broken stick doll, she was dragging bent useless legs. As soaked and sunken as I was, I couldn't help feeling that the lack of bitterness in her eyes was the blessing she had received.

Morning came cool, misty, pure, and rapidly changed into warmth under the usual spring-like sun. In late afternoon I wandered on, glad to be free of Allahabad's choked streets, but sad to leave the fatherly bearded Sikhs who rescued me from the stormy night. Very soon after leaving their fortress of a temple, I was at the Ganges herself. Already the bridge was choked with mufflerless three-wheeled taxis and rattling windowless buses filled with still more pilgrims, coming to catch the end of the month-long bathing festival.

On the mud flats along the roiling river current was the largest number of tents I had seen in my life. The patched, angled canvases of Mother Ganges's brood left no gaps between myself and the far flat horizon. The notes of flutes and playing children floated up to me, along with the smoke of all the campfires. The squatting lumps ringing the fires took me back to the gypsies of Turkey. Those seclusive but friendly nomands never traveled as lightly as these Indians. Their camps had been of warmer teepees, grazing pack horses, and the smells of wool and leather and roasting corn. The gypsy camps had been small enough to be romantic, but such camps as these beside the Ganges were too overwhelming to be anything but a spectacle. I continued east, contented to leave such places to other explorers less loathsome of crowds and noise.

Four days later, downriver from Allahabad, I came to Varanasi (or Benares, as most still say in deference to its ancient name). Where Allahabad was a place to renew the soul, or in a sense be reborn, Varanasi was reserved for the dead. Here is where the Hindu faithful have their spent bodies of this incarnation consumed by fire and then tossed into Mother Ganges. It is a returning of themselves to the All.

And yet, ironically, the very magnitude and (alas) profitability of an industry as stable as that of Death has attracted to Varanasi a greater clamor of life than is to be found in most cities several times its size. Swept along by the tide of voices and crying babies, one nearly forgets about the pyres burning nonstop along the river. The wistful shouts of the religious paraphernalia vendors, the streets crammed with rickshaws, the children charging from everywhere to practice on me their school English made Death seem a "has-been."

"Good morning, sir!"

"What is you name?"

"Sir, my name is..."

Down at the river, at the smokey gate to Death itself, there is the greatest display of life anywhere: Curly-tailed monkeys screech from temple walls; Children rake embers from spent pyres for their mothers to cook their meals on; Cows savor marigols garlands that had decorated the deceased; Brightly-dressed old women cackle delightfully at each other's stories, their voices more vigorous than the logs crackling beneath the burning bodies. And, as if to show Deat once and for all that it is not be taken seriously, there are thousands of persons of all ages splashing merrily in the spots in the river where all the ashes and charred bones of the dead are raked.

In the evenings in Varanasi, the sun becomes as a perfectly round dot of immense beauty, like a sort of celestial tikka dot. When it sets, it leaves behind a flaming world and a din that never softens until just before it rises again. The sky at dusk turns the color of the ashes around the pyres, and it reflects off a wide, slow Ganges etched with criss-crossing rowboats and junks. Silently, the black, featureless forms of the boats drift past the flaming pyres like restless spirits that have been freed by the pyres' fires but are still reluctant to leave behind all the laughter and merriment.

On my final day in Varanasi I stepped from my back-alley hotel to take one more good look at a city that, much like India itself, is too lively to ever begin to know. Just outside the hotel entrance I was stopped by the smiling round face of what was surely one of the most exotic beings on my journey. The smile and eyes of this ancient holy man in saffron robes spoke to my imagination of mucj mystery and beauty. My heart pounded. What an endless source of delights this world could be!

Politely, kindly, the Chinese-looking Buddhist monk told me in his halting English that he was a Tibetan lama. And that with him were two of his Buddhist devotees.

They were the most compelling humans I had seen since leaving Europe. On their backs were crude packs of board and cloth. They had journeyed from the hidden heights of the Himalayas to learn more about the world below their solitary monastery.

"What is your name?" the monk asked softly, as all three bowed toward their tattered sneakers.

With the excitement of an excited schoolboy, my voice rang out, "Sir, my name is Steven!"

Steven