In disgust the large woman thus reprimanded at the end of his advertising spiel slapped the full fare into the boatman’s hand and swayed down the steps to where the boat was moored. It rocked dangerously as she stepped in, and for an all too brief moment teetered on the brink of capsizing. Her husband, no doubt spurred by a finely honed instinct for self-preservation, prevented a hoped-for disaster by grabbing as much of his wife’s midriff as he could, while still clutching the full-fare paying child’s hand. She recovered quickly enough to turn furiously on her rescuer. The boatman, who had paused in his spiel so as not to miss the woman’s tumble, spat contemptuously and returned to bawling for people to join his sunset tour of the burning ghats of Benares.

The trajectory of the boatman’s spittle-shot would have gone unobserved in the fading light, but it didn’t escape Atharva (“Call me Art”) Sharma, of Cupertino, California, whose revulsed eyes followed it to its soft ‘plop’ in the holy Ganges. Art’s stomach turned at the thought of the enormous quantities of filth, rotting corpses and germs that the floating blob of saliva had just augmented. Since his arrival in the holy city of Benares two days before, Art had steadfastly refused to drink even bottled mineral water, terrified that the bottles had been filled by hand by snot-nosed urchins supervised by hairy, sweaty men who pumped it straight from the river. Instead he drank copious amounts of Pepsi (Diet Coke was nowhere to be found).

Art reluctantly made his way down the steps to the boat, after duly paying the boatman. He sat near the stern, and wondered yet again what the hell he was doing in Benares instead of downing sake bombs with Annika or his buddies at one of the many sushi bars near Stanford. “Son, a few weeks in India might be a good way to relax before Wall Street.” The idea had been his father’s. Art had readily acquiesced, not out of a desire to explore his roots, but because he had heard accounts that quantities of marijuana and other mind-enhancing substances were easily to be had while backpacking in India. The previous year his buddy Samarth (“Call me Sam”) had returned from a two-week trip in Kodaikanal with ecstatic testimonials to the accuracy of this long-held belief among the Indian-American youth of Cupertino.

Art sat in the thwarts of the little boat and heartily cursed Sam, Benares, and his own ignorance about Indian geography. Who would have imagined that Benares, a thousand miles away, would be so different from Kodaikanal of fabled repute? Two days in Benares and all he had smelled in the narrow streets was cow manure, human sweat, rotting garbage and gasoline fumes. Not a whiff of Mary Jane. And this was the holy city? Ho-ly shit!

Despite his repugnance at the ancient city’s squalor, Art had found his way to the Ghats on the bank of the Ganges early that afternoon, expertly deposited there by a cycle-rickshaw that zigzagged miraculously through the narrow alleys, somehow avoiding cows and people. Along the way, disjointed sitar and tabla music emanating from the dark kothis assaulted his ears. He was no stranger to Hindustani classical music, as his father had an extensive collection, but this music seemed strangely alien. The cycle-rickshaw driver, a garrulous fellow, seemed to know everyone in the street by name, shouting greetings as they lurched by.

At the ghats he had wandered about desultorily, taking in with distaste the dingy buildings, the grimy sadhus with matted hair looking blankly into the distance, and the hundreds of women immersing themselves fervently in the dull brown water. Young, aggressive priests were on the prowl, approaching him several times to have his future revealed, his fortune told. They sensed he was a foreigner, despite his Indian looks. He cringed inwardly at the religious hustle that pervaded the city. He had always been uncomfortable with the notion that India and Indians were specially gifted in the spiritual sense, and the sight of a young priest squatting on his haunches intensely picking his nose did nothing to change his mind.

His parents had convinced him to visit Benares. “An evening cruise on the Ganges can be salubrious to the spirit,” his dad had said in precise, textbook-English. His father was the only person that Art knew who would use the word “salubrious” in a conversation. Also the only one who would call a twenty-minute boat ride in a sewer a cruise.

Suddenly he was aware that boat had begun moving, the slap of the oars against the water clearly audible over the hubbub of the passengers. Evidently the boatman’s stentorian yelling had produced results. Looking around him, Art observed a paunchy businessman from Delhi (he later gave Art his card), the large woman, her husband and the full-fare paying youth, who seemed as stoic as his father in facing the large woman’s muttered harangues. Up in the prow, like an incongruous Norse figurehead on a Viking longship, there perched a thin, ascetic looking white man, dressed like a sadhu in saffron robes and ash smearing his forehead. Art realized with surprise that he had been there all along, probably the first passenger to get in. Later, the sight of the white man with the billowing blond hair, silhouetted against the twilight, was to be his most vivid memory of the trip. During the entire ride the man gazed out across the waters, saying nothing and barely moving.

The boatman pulled strongly on the oars. A wizened old man manipulated the tiller. As the boat pulled away, the boatman launched into his tour-guide shtick, made glib and uninteresting by years of practice. He pointed out the various historical ghats they passed as the boat glided along the river. To Art they were just long, dingy rows of steps descending to the water, but the paunchy businessman took many pictures, even including a close up of the murky water from a foot away.

Oblivious of a dead cat that Art could see floating serenely down the river a few feet away, the large woman scooped some river water into her son’s mouth. “It’s holy water, it will help you in school,” she declared. Goaded by her grimaces her husband also drank a mutinous handful. The Delhi businessman, looking guiltily at Art, shrugged nervously and said, “What can we do, it is holy mother Ganga.” Dipping a finger overboard, he let one drop of the Ganges trickle down his throat. Art expected him to keel over clutching his throat, as nameless germs took over his body, but nothing happened. Meanwhile, in his best “the city never sleeps” voice, the boatman pointed out Manikarnika Ghat, where the dead were burned round the clock. Art got a distant glimpse of the pyres, ghostly men moving amidst the smoke to tend the fires, and casting gigantic shadows on the walls behind. His last impression as the boat turned back was the reflected flames dancing on the water, like figures in an El Greco painting.

An hour later, Art found himself near his hotel, restless and wanting to lash out at something he couldn’t understand. He felt duped by his parents, by his heritage. Benares had ignored him completely, going about what it had done for thousands of years. In the city where men came to purify their souls, he felt curiously unclean. He did something he’d never done before – he spat spitefully into the darkness and began walking towards his hotel. “It’s a shit hole anyway.”

There was a public restroom near his hotel. Art remembered having thought that the stink made the rest of the town smell almost like Cupertino. As he neared it he heard the singing, and the monotonous sound of the ektara, the one-stringed lute. A few feet from the public restroom, sitting in the street under the thin light of a forty watt light bulb suspended from a tree, about twenty people were chanting the name of God.

“Shri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram,” they sang. Over and over again, not missing a beat or rising in crescendo. They seemed unaware of the filth not twenty feet away. They sang the name of God with an easy affection. After a while he lowered his backpack on the ground and sat on it, listening to the singing and the twang of the ektara. After about an hour, he got up and went to his hotel, feeling oddly exuberant.