“Learning and Living in Varanasi: My Summer on the Other Side of the World”
by Pyper Scharer
Claremont McKenna College
My piece highlights some of the challenges I faced as a conspicuous foreigner during my nine weeks in Varanasi, India last summer.
By the end of the nine weeks I spent in Varanasi, India last summer, I realized I had done everything my parents had told me not to do. This insight came to me while I was sitting on the shelf above the back wheel of my friend’s rusty, broken bicycle. We were riding back from the prominent art museum at Banaras Hindu University to the elementary school where we stayed and I worked. Throughout the summer, I spent quite a bit of time at BHU – usually at the beautiful Vishwanath Temple – and grew accustomed to travelling to and from the campus on the back of friends’ motorcycles or electric scooters. Each time I did so, I blatantly defied a rule my mom set when I was a child – no riding on anything with two wheels without a helmet. Even though I took a bit of delight in knowing my parents wouldn’t approve of some of the decisions I made in India, I did not choose to do things just to be rebellious. In truth, most of my experiences, especially my disobedient acts, grew organically from relationships I built and from circumstance.
In June, before I left the United States, a friend’s travel-oriented parents told me, “Varanasi, India is the dirtiest city we have ever visited.” I told myself it couldn’t really be that bad, but became wary of the decision I had made to spend my summer teaching math at Vidyashram – The Southpoint, an elementary school run by an NGO called Nirman. When I arrived in Varanasi, after nearly thirty hours of transcontinental travel, I immediately understood what they meant. On the hour-long drive from the airport into the city, I saw shops with rotting signs and peeling paint, livestock meandering down the road, and massive piles of trash lying in every street. The air conditioning in my taxi didn’t work, so with the windows down, I got my first taste of both the sweltering heat and the stench of human waste.
As we got closer to the city, the trash piles became higher in concentration and in altitude. Some of these urban garbage mountains measured up to four feet at their peaks, spanning the width of a standard American driveway. The smell also worsened. While this sanitation deficiency was especially striking, my first impressions of India are most colored by the images of people I saw. The vibrancy of women’s saris – draped effortlessly but elegantly over their bodies – was offset by their weathered, scrutinizing expressions and their wild, black hair. Most of them wore bindis – the typical Hindu forehead decorations – and large gold piercings in their noses. Many of the men I saw were working, and their dark, leathery skin shone dully with sweat through a layer of dust. Their hardened faces reflected the world in which they lived –a world in which I felt like an interloper all summer.
With my blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, I was obviously a foreigner. Most of the people I met treated me as such. Every day presented a new linguistic and cultural challenge which my Aryan appearance only exacerbated. I couldn’t go anywhere unnoticed. Virtually everyone I walked by stared at me in a way which would be considered rude in the western world. The looks I received communicated a deep sense of longing – it was like they wanted to understand why I was different and where I had come from. My friends explained that people stared out of curiosity, which I tried to take to heart, but I often found myself unsettled by the amount of attention I received. What’s more, vendors and rickshaw-wallahs tended to equate white skin with tourism and prosperity, so many saw me as an opportunity to turn extra profit. Because I had Indian friends with whom I went everywhere, however, I quickly learned what the “Indian” price should be. I often insisted, in a hybrid of broken Hindi and simple English, that I was not a tourist, that I lived in Varanasi, and that I refused to pay what were, by local standards, exorbitant prices. This struggle characterized many transactions, and at times became so frustrating I chose to walk away rather than negotiate prices. When a rickshaw-wallah demanded an unfair price, I would usually turn away and continue walking toward my destination. Another rickshaw-wallah would then pull up next to me, offering his services. The two men would often argue – I once witnessed a fistfight – over who was entitled to my business. This process instigated price competition, and I generally ended up paying the fare I’d insisted on in the first place.
At one point, I lamented to my friend Avantika, who was born and raised in the U.S. but moved back to India with her parents before high school, “It is so frustrating to live here, feel like a member of the community in some ways, but still be treated like an outsider by people who expect me to pay more for things than I know is fair!” Her nonchalant response profoundly impacted me and changed the way I view the world. She commented, “That’s probably what racism in the United States feels like.” This realization humbled me and helped ease my frustrations when interacting with vendors in India. I tried to bear in mind the fact that many of the people, especially the rickshaw-wallahs, live in extreme poverty, and my money was often more valuable to them than it is to me.
By my third week, I had put all of my western clothing back into my suitcase, choosing instead to wear salwar pants and long, kurti tops made by a local tailor from light cotton woven by local textile workers. Over the course of my trip, I made five separate trips to the tailor, and ended up with a nice collection of brightly colored tops and billowy pants. Because kurtis have long, dress-like flaps at the bottom, I quickly picked up the local habit of fanning myself with the bottom of my shirt. Wearing Indian clothing helped me adjust to the extreme heat – about 115° Fahrenheit before monsoon season – and it also made me feel more comfortable walking around the city. Though I still received attention, I felt more confident walking around on my own than I had previously. This was another defiant activity of mine – before I left home, both of my parents told me repeatedly not to go anywhere alone due to safety concerns. As I grew more acquainted with the city, I felt more secure venturing further away from Nirman.
In spending time in India, and particularly Varanasi, a goal of mine was to purchase a beautiful sari as a memento of my experience. Thirty years ago, my mother travelled to Pune, India with a Girl Scout delegation. During her five weeks there, she had a sari made, which I admired while I was growing up. She encouraged me to find my own, saying, “You’ll have it forever.” Also, Varanasi is known for its vibrant silk “Banarasi” saris; they are sold in India’s big cities, but the best prices and most original work can be found in Varanasi itself.
One day in June, I went shopping for saris with a friend’s mother at a wholesale shop owned by another friend’s father. Before we arrived, he called the local weavers and told them to bring their saris; when we got there, there was a group of six or seven sweaty men waiting to show us their work. They took turns slowly unfolding each sari a little bit so we could see the color. If we gave any indication of interest, they would open the sari with a flourish so we could see the detailing. All in all, we probably looked at about two hundred saris. I bought two beautiful Banarasi saris: one is a bright, “bridal” pink and orange with subtle floral designs and gold stitching, the other is white “summer silk” with blue flowers and a black border. Because we’d gone to the wholesaler, we paid about half of retail price. The electrical power, which goes out for eight to twelve hours each day, had been on and off all afternoon, so the seller’s credit card reader wasn’t working. After walking to four broken ATMs, I finally found one that was working.
After paying him, we stood near the ATM discussing the final touches that would be added to my saris. All of a sudden, I noticed two little boys standing behind him. It took me a few moments to realize that they were each holding a basket containing a cobra. I hate snakes. Involuntarily, I released a short, harsh wail, and my knees buckled. I started hyperventilating, and Soniya rushed over from across the street. Soon I was sobbing, and the little boys ran away. While Soniya comforted me, a group of curious Indian men had gathered to watch my breakdown. I couldn’t help but think that at home, people would mind their own business or even perhaps avoid me because of the scene I was making. Snake charming has been outlawed in India, but law is often flexible there, and some like to dazzle tourists with their exotic pets.
While I was in India, most of what I saw, heard, smelled, and tasted served as a reminder of how far I was from home. Despite the loneliness I often derived from the isolation from my family and friends at home, the independence I gained from being so completely on my own proved exhilarating. The rush I got from simply running errands – negotiating purchases and growing relationships in the community – was intoxicating. I developed a routine in which I would walk into Lanka, the bustling intersection nearby, in order to recharge my cell phone with money to make calls, buy a snack – often samosas and visit the tailor. None of the vendors spoke English, but I managed to establish unique friendships with each of them, characterized by warm smiles and mutual salutation. When a group of American students arrived to study abroad at Nirman, I went with them to the tailor to negotiate the production of their new Indian clothing. Because I had been there a few times before, the man directed his communicative motions at me, rather than at his current customers, and I helped show him what to do on their behalves. On one of my last days in Varanasi, I visited the samosa vendor, who gave me my samosas without sauce, having learned my preference. Across the street from him was a grocer, who always grinned at me and waved when I walked by. These gestures of familiarity made me realize that, in my own small way, I had become a member of the community. While I was still an outsider to the majority of the people I encountered, these special relationships validated my decision to spend my summer so far from home.
Now that I’m home, I feel I have little connecting me – socially, physically, and emotionally – to the time I spent in India. When I visited three of my friends from college in Bangalore in July, I impulsively had my nose pierced for fifty rupees (about one American dollar) at a little stand on a street corner. My dad has always forbidden facial piercings of any kind, but I felt so immersed in my experience that I didn’t worry about potential repercussions. When I came home, he understood its meaning to me. When I look in the mirror now, I am reminded by the small piece of metal in my nose of the formative summer I spent on the other side of the world.
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Rudy Maxa and Allan Comport judged the RateYourStudyAbroad.com Fall 2010 Travel Writing & Photography Contest. Rudy Maxa is the host of PBS‘s RudyMaxa’s World, a former Washington Post reporter and the former host of NPR‘s The Savvy Traveler. Allan Comport is a professor of art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
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