The smoke from funeral pyres enveloped us with a smell
like burnt dust on a radiator, only sour and more pungent.
The crowds were thick with unwashed bodies milling about
everywhere. The bridge over the Ganges at Brij Ghat
felt more hellish than sacred, more diabolical than spiritual.
A ragged toothless old woman came up beside me
held out her hand and I slipped her a ten rupee note
(worth about 10 cents) and she faded back into the crowd.
All this allure for exotic, mystical India and I hated it.
I had had stomach problems since arriving. And
the filth, the garbage, the stink, the poverty made me sick.
Here we were on the Ganga Ma, the greatest waterway
in the world, and all I could think of was Robert Bly’s line
“wherever there is water there is someone drowning.”