VARANASI the religious capital of India

This city of a little less than 1 million people is right inbetween Delhi and Kolkata upon the banks of Ganges river and has BOTH the northern lack of interest to things physical AND the southern lack of interest to things intellectual.Only in this city did i see wild monkeys,freely running around in real closeness to humans.Not in the city itself,only upon the railway station.They are completely unafraid of humans there and my guess is Varanasi population is SO much less dangerous as the city is the centre of religious life in India,hinduism believing monkeys to be holy animals along with cows;as such they may NOT be hunted/wasted etc and are given full freedom of action.I never saw them in Kolkata,wher i lived for a long time though,where I guess they would become an easy prey of this free no expense meat source of local people.About food,and i had seen caffee repertoir there often on numerous occasions-all of publically available food is mostly vegetarian and is completely compliant with hindu requirements of no meat eaten;but in certain spots it IS possible to eat meat/fish etc;THAT food exists simply ONLY for meateaters.Once i decided to feed a fruit to a monkey upon the Varanasi city railway station so i threw it towards them,and 1 of the monkeys(sized like a 6 year old boy and behaving alike too,yet much more active,even as seemingly not at all interested in humans)immediately snatched the fruit and started eating it right upon that very spot,some 10 metres away from myself.This amazingly free wild animals' behaviour i witnessed only inside of Varanasi while i had been to many large India cities as well.1 more VERY extreme an experience in Varanasi was when we(me and my local friend i met in a Kolkata paying guest hotel)entered a small hindu temple of his own choice.The temple wasnt looking anything special to me as i entered it,from the outside i mean.I personally would never chose to enter it as the entrance to it looked like a very normal place with no original things around it;but my local friend knew what exactly was he doing.The main deity in it made upon me the MOST exquisite impression of ALL different countries' deities i ever saw,and there were many.Only my album ''Temples'' that holds photoes from ukrainian churches mostly,contains like 200 photoes from the insides of churches.I remember that Varanasi temple deity being of a small 5 years old child size,situated upon the level of one's eyes and covered in very nice clothes with its surroundings giving the largest spiritual experiences of ALL the temples i had ever been to,and those were many in different countries.All in all Varanasi is like a large 'natural reserve' or a National Park,a pure and unobstructed in any ways immense home for religious people,all behaving like a natural reserve animals would with weird changes to the very same principle of behaviour in those.I saw this same special feeling to hindu deities in some Puri religious families' homes i was passing by in the east coast holy city upon its main streets(had been to Puri at the very start of my India travels for an entire day in 2011),but there right before a home entrance a small palm sized deity always was installed while more official and grand looking Varanasi houses never had this feature to them,the city being grand and pretty strict in architectural detail with no weird looking details like small deities before a private home in sight,the way homes of Puri religious people always look.Puri is a much smaller than Varanasi town upon the north-eastern coast of India,also very much dominated by religious people.When off the temple deity observation(the most striking 1 of all I saw in different temples in India and I had been to many)i was immediately approached by the temple priest,a very thin,seemingly emotionally emaciated somewhat nervous and seemingly rich on internal intellectual expreriences nice gentleman,all clothed in weird local clothes,who was looking nothing like any always officially looking Ukraine priests do(i saw many of them there while making temples' photoes),but who reminded me a long time refraining from food university professor,who suddenly sank into childish activities with loss of ALL understanding of the world outside of this particular temple his eternal home.The priest,because he was acting like one would,suddenly and unexpectedly approached me with amazing quickness of step,asked me several weird questions after which he just AS quickly disappeared from view,questions that looked very strange considering that situation,obviously recognizing a foreighner,among which i recall the country i live in and the name of my mother.Temples in Varanasi are both grand looking and very numerous,much unlike Puri city ones,where they are much smaller with a micro deity a religious home entrance;the rest of Puri town purely dominated by normal indian locals.In Varanasi though the ENTIRE city is perfectly dominated by religion of hinduism and its intricacies to the point,where religious stop even considering the reality outside of temples/religious centres.1 more feature of city life i never witnessed in any of other cities of India or another country too,were public cremations,happening inside of a somewhat less sounding,yet a city suburb(not in its centre yet not upon its outskirts too),which can be freely watched by any passer by.Hinduism believes that the owner of the body had simply departed to live in another body,leaving this useless body behind into this new better life condition.I happened in that place completely unexpectedly while roaming the city streets freely,looking for new impressions.Recognizing this amazing situation immidiately,I myself could not leave untill watching it start and even then into unfolding of it at lenght,SO interesting was watching this cremation unfold before my own eyes-the very weird show one can never ever witness in any other world spot,including TV as well.Not simply a small place,but a comparatively active suburb of a large city to this,even as not its central part.This was not in any crematorium,one all closed from everyone able to see it at all as it is in most every cremation ground,but inside of the city and even not upon an isolated street,but a busy active one.The dead body is brought in to the cremation grounds upon a normal hospital stretcher the way ill people are transported,it is then fully clothed in exclusive local clothes and with fresh flowers around it,just as Indian tradition prescribes it.After this a priest spent around 15 minutes in a ceremony with pronouncing the guy's great qualities i'd guess(all in hindi and so completely not understandable to me),after which the same priest opens the fire with simple matches;they start a smaller shred of paper or a matter;the shred is put then to the stretcher with the body upon it;the fire quickly envelops the body as it had just been profusely covered with easily flammable liquids,those that smell like cerosene,but very profusely;all well seen to maybe 100 people,gathered at that spot for watching the CEREMONY unfold.To the description of the YES ceremony,even as a very standard ''joke like'' looking 1,you must add that NO nice looking paraphernalia or exquisite presents/things are ever in use in it and all is looking like JUST a simple life process going on(the way a kitchen cooking of a dish normally does).Seemingly much accustomed to similar shows watchers of that ceremony show no sign of ANY feelings like crying or sorrow and simply watch it all while standing at the place.As the strong fire immidiately envelops the body(previously richly covered with things flammable from a large canister with petroleum like smell),along with the heavy smell the vaporizing from the fire dead body was emitting,just AS disturbing for an outsider(locals around didnt seem to mind it in the least though)was the sight of a human body burning,to the brain this time,because the smoke wasnt THAT heavy as to block the vision off very effectively,even as dark fumes were vaporizing in quantities.Unlike upon other funeral ceremonies i was witnessing none around was showing ANY signs of displeasure/horror/any abnormal action from this show;all the watchers had been reacting to it as to any other not really important a public action.The hardest thing to come through during the cremation(the thing that also finally made me leave the otherwise exclusively interesting show i never even suspected was possible to ever see)during the happening is the heavily injuring you smell of the burning body,which is not resembling anything else i recall.Well,the most common idea of that smell is given by a burning plastic materials,as i recall that was also what burning of a corpse did to it,JUST what burning of plastics does to them;that same disgustingly nasty and eating you alive inside smell of burning plastics,just that the smell isnt chemical at all,as with plastics it is,but "natural",yet just AS disgusting or much more so nevertheless.It tends to kill off your nose and churn your brain inside too.Even as i myself,turned completely over with that smell after maybe 20 minutes of watching it all unfold,was finally leaving the show in progress as my nose was now refusing cooperation,ALL the other watchers remained visibly senseless,looking averagely and glued to the show with what i percieved as weird grim determination to be upon that very spot to the very end of the ceremony unfolding.Its also hard to shake that smell off yourself even once the cremation is over/you are off the watching of it-THAT nasty is the smell!I left the cremation finally exactly because the smell became too disturbing to hold through the ceremony for any longer.None else of the present was leaving this show though,obviously determined to watch it to the very end,and i guess also well used to cremations' smells.Here MOST of other places the public behaviour reminded me of that in the Riyadh the Saudi Arabia capital airport,where people acted like machines that had no live feelings(EXACTLY the same impression involved here)but only mechanical functions to perform-the very same mechanism-like complete support of the ruling the brain idea to bring the people into the spot.Cremations are held ever in the same city spot and multiple very similar small coal heaps were showing how often had the place been used for the purpose.Similar coals' heaps showed me that SO many similar cremations had been performed here previously.The results of previous cremations,they were a little paler by colour,thats all.After the cremations finish the resulting ashes are supposed to be thrown out into the holy to Hindu worshippers Ganges river;which i didnt witness personally.According to the normal hindu belief the soul then simply leaves this body and then becomes attached to a new 1;so why bother about the details of its next existance?What IS done in river Ganges(Varanasi has exclusively nicely architecturally managed ghats;saw those and even bathed in 1 of those ghats;other bathers all looked like religious people with enough physics to river bath and there are NOT many of such there;is bathing and i myself had even once bathed there.Surrounded by more businesslike people than upon numerous Kolkata ghats i also frequented as in that city.Ganges river in Varanasi is crossing the city into about two similar by size halves,and it is easy to cross it by swimming too for a good swimmer;not that i DID notice anyone doing this though;and i mean NOT for like an excellent swimmer was it simple to cross the river,unlike in Kolkata West Bengal,where it isnt EVER possible to cross the river aswim,both because of the great distance to the other shore(only houses visible there,no human siluetthes percievable at all,SUCH is the distance to that other Gabges shore there,and even more so because of a strong current that is quickly moving in the river' middle.Currents,seen well at their power as they pull some tree branches towards the sea,are THAT strong as to pretty easily divert even strong muscular swimmers off their determination to cross the river in Kolkata West Bengal.The other shore of Ganges river here in Varanasi is clearly visible and easy to reach,unlike it is in Kolkata.The strenght of the Kolkata Ganges was percievable when it moved along the river middle some tree branches.The speed of the middle of Ganges river in Kolkata is like a half of the speed of an average car that passes city streets.The current there would easily take a swimmer off the course and too far away too,so none ever attempted this feat of crossing it there.The quantity of people,taking a bath in the Varanasi ghat was considerably smaller than in the Kolkata ghat(river spot for bathing)i bathed twice during each day around Kolkata,but not seriously smaller while the Ganges river was much smaller in width,less dangerous for crossing it to the other river shore.The decorations of the Varanasi ghat were of great quality,all nicely managed architecturally and also scrupulously worked over,with numerous engraved signs in a local language,i guess the hindi one;Kolkata ghats never holding any of such details to them even as MUCH more populated by swimmers.The Varanasi ghat i was bathing at(only once as ALL the time i spent in Varanasi was from 1 morning to that very day's evening,my Ganges valley local friend circling the city around me;was not even close to the simple spot for just bathing I frequented when living near Kolkata,with signs for swimmers well visible.Ghats are always well and meticulously cleanly kept,in both cities,have no garbage or else such similar displeasing things around,are all in an amazingly clean condition,and only once I saw a disruption to this rule(had been bathing in Ganges twice each day when staying in a Kolkata paying guest in 2011)in the Bally town West Bengal ghat(a VERY much not a central spot and even more,a provincial NOT centre connected at all 1),when close to it a corpse of a brought by the river current cow was laying partly decomposing.This sight was both disturbing and very much uncommon-i used then to bath in many spots around Kolkata for the fun of it-youth takes its own,i was 39 in 2011 the year of my India travels and in an excellent physical condition to that,which was making me perfectly capable of walking around a city for 3 hours at least non stop and NOT needing any break to the foot travel to that,EXACTLY what i had been actively busy BOTH in India and in Haifa Israel too often as well.The decomposing cow corpse was seen during one day only and disappeared the very next day though and this case was the ONLY disruption to the otherwise clean and with a medicinal area induced worked over spot's conditon,THAT spotlessly clean and well kept had been the indian bathing river spots.It isnt that the shore wasnt dirty-it was BUT the ghat itself was spotlessly clean always.Varanasi city structure is very well managed,has no mismanaged areas at all,is with numerous very nice architecturally perfectly worked over buildings,the words to describe which shortly would be GRAND and MAGNIFICENT.Varanasi city structure being efficient so much more than the Bombay city one is,and Bombay is a MUCH more important to India city than Varanasi economically and has maybe a twenty times larger importance to the country economics and i guess is 10 times larger by population too.Speaking of Bombay,where i spent once close to a full day awaiting a train to elsewhere as i never liked that city(currently listed as Mumbai after a new religious dominated government decided to rename it though),it reminded me simply a lot of nighttime housing to comfort daytime workers of complicated industries' styles,something,completely abscent in the lazy sleepy style of Kolkata city.My OWN impression held that if you wished to work and earn real cash your city in India was definitely Mumbai;if you wanted to lead a completely religion dictated life your city was Varanasi,if you wanted a lazy sleepy no action at all life it was Kolkata etc.Hinduism itself(funnily still a MUCH stronger force around India than anything else is)lets everyone get overbusy with his OWN occupations,not interrupting into those AT ALL.This very similar attitude does also Israel hold to life,and both India and Israel in reality are the only mostly religious countries with secular influence over average life strictly avoided and showing itself as ''the real life fact''(it never is in realtiy of life nevertheless)only inside of TV and other public shows like the politics from the country capital etc.The thing is even ''as babies play on''(capital politics here),REAL men are much busy with REAL things to do;and those ''real things'' are EXACTLY the sort of a show i witnessed as a Varanasi religious cremation-those are amazingly banal yet taken crazily seriously SIMPLE DAILY LIFE events.I witnessed this myself on numerous occasions as i live in Israel.