It was certainly the biggest gathering I could possibly imagine, and the only reason I am able to now picture it in my mind is because I went there and saw it with my eyes.
So often I get lost here. I am keeping myself in a tiny part of a district in Varanasi and my primary concern is getting from school to my hotel about once a day. Even after nearly two weeks of this I am unable to replicate a five-minute path with consistency. I no longer stay lost for hours as I did in the past, and I no longer end up a half mile away from the school when I make my way to the main road which I know and use to orient myself, but still I always wonder a bit and see new alleyways that I do not recognize.
Let me explain – there is a main road and the Ganges. I have stayed at around ten different hotels between these two, and they must be a half mile apart or less. My current hotel is on Scindhia Ghat, so right on the water, and the school is in a straight line (as the monkey jumps) toward the road. Of course, I cannot go by rooftop so my path turns a bit. The number of ways to get lost between these two points is enormous. When I have confidence that I can navigate between these places both ways then I will start to explore elsewhere.
The times when I have gone to other places I can always work my way home by asking “Gangaji?,” which I think means “Mr. Ganges?” If one says “Ganges” no one seems to understand. I like my hotel and I like that it is directly on the river, so it is especially easy to find. But the point that I would like to impress is that a person, starting from the main road and knowing that a perpendicular path from this toward the river should quickly engender a way to the same, actually has no surety of arriving without become disoriented and going a long way parallel to the river.
I have decided that my paper journal is growing superfluous as I have nothing to say that should not be on this blog. Very soon I will write to this blog at least three times a week, and part of my first work will be transcription of what I wrote by pen.