Indian odyssey: A Holi debauch in Varanasi

Jeff Tayler — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:29:00 EST

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Asia, India

Varanasi, City of Death, City of Passage to Worlds Beyond.

Founded by Lord Shiva on the banks of the holy Ganges, Varanasi (once known as Benares) occupies the most sacred land in India, and is a reputed tirtha (passage point to the Other World). For at least 3,000 years Varanasi has drawn India's dying, specifically those dying Hindus seeking release from Samsara, the burdensome cycle of birth, death, and rebirth in which all beings are karmically rewarded or punished for their deeds on earth with a new round of existence, accordingly torturous or pleasant. However, if you expire in Varanasi, have yourself cremated in a pyre beneath the handless clock of Manikarnika Ghat, and have your ashes consigned to the Ganges, you achieve moksha, the highest release possible, the most munificent mercy of all: freedom from Samsara, everlasting surcease of suffering and dispatch to the ethereal Void beyond the world of the flesh.

Well-read travelers to India probably know this much about Varanasi even before arriving. But Varanasi is not only a citadel of mortal passage and spiritual relief. Soot-stained, chock-full of crumbling temples and hostels for the moribund and screeching monkeys, reeking of incense and sandalwood and less salubrious odors, ostensibly holy Varanasi is also home to some 3 million human beings with entirely mundane, even profane, proclivities. I found myself with an unexpected chance to see this for myself during my third sojourn there, two years ago, during the springtime Hindu festival of Holi, when people ritualistically splash each other with colored dyes and ignite corner bonfires in celebration of the deity Prahlad´s escape from the flames into which the demoness Holika had cast him. There are other rites associated with Holi, but for some youths celebratory antics have recently taken more serious turns involving drunkenness and debauchery, the groping of female tourists foolish enough to wander the streets, even assault and rape.

All of which prompted me to wish for Holi's end even before it had started. As it was, an undercurrent of violence seemed to flow through the city, born of overpopulation, caste-related violence in the surrounding countryside, and desperate poverty. My Varanasi-born Indian friend, whom I will call Rajiv here, to protect his identity, sensed my trepidation, and invited me to festivities he was arranging for later in the day.

"Holi out on the streets is one thing," Rajiv said. "But I will show you another." He winked slyly. "If you attend my party, I promise you will not regret it."

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Indian odyssey: A Holi debauch in Varanasi originally appeared on Gadling on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Letter from Russia: Moscow's latest revolution (is culinary)

Jeff Tayler — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:28:00 EST

Filed under: Food and Drink, Europe, Russian Federation

Gone are the bandit days of the Russian Wild East, the roaring 1990s, when the pyrotechnic shrapnel from mafiya bombings and Kalashnikov shoot-outs ripped flaming through the shroud of Moscow's endless snowy nights. No longer do caged strippers gyrate in warehouse discotheques under the deadpan stares of shaven-skulled mafiozy. Vanished are the night club dance floors teeming with gorgeous hookers and soused expat carpetbaggers flashing greenbacks, the King Dollar. Against a backdrop of mass hinterland impoverishment, the Moscow Zeitgeist of the roaring nineties was one of excess, delirium, and revolt - revolt against the inhumanly shabby, puritanically austere, prematurely geriatric identity the Soviet system forced on Russians of all ages.

This revolt played out largely after dark, in cafes and bars and restaurants, and had everything to do with realizing long-repressed dreams of satiation, with reveling in once-forbidden Western-style pleasures of the flesh and palate. One might argue, in fact, that the demise of the Soviet Union was less about democracy and human rights, and more of a protest against bad borsht, and that same bad borsht, meted out in such small portions (to paraphrase Woody Allen), in dank cement canteens in a country spanning eleven time zones.

The collapse of the Russian economy in 1998 quelled the revolt, dimmed the lights, and sent most foreigners packing. After the elections of 2000, sober Vladimir Putin reigned in the Kremlin as president, and now pulls the strings of government as prime minister in the Russian White House. A quietus followed his instatement, then an energy-revenue boom that has fast outstripped historical analogues. Oil is now pushing $80 a barrel (eight times more than during the Yeltsin years). Even as the Russian economy has slipped into recession (as a result of the world financial crisis), petro-dollars have been flooding in and trickling down, average personal income has doubled, and the number of poor Russians has halved.

A new New Russia has emerged - one now the fourth most ravenous consumer of the planet's luxury goods. The mafiozy have aged, gone legit, or been jailed, and ordinary Muscovites, relaxed, affluent, and proud of their country yet appreciative of the West, have confected what may be the most vibrant and varied café, restaurant, and club scene in Europe. As a denizen of Moscow's after-hours haunts for the past seventeen years, I can state without reserve that partying in the Russian capital is serious business, the raison d'être for a people to whom nocturnal leisure is still a thrilling novelty, a way of asserting identity in what is (for Russians), after all, an era of cultural tumult no less momentous than the 1960s were in the West.

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