"Baap re baap it's hot!" my apology to Varanasi

I have made an irreversible mistake.

I am still in Varanasi (that is not, in and of itself, the mistake); a fact which boggles the minds of most of my friends. Ok, all of my friends. Why? Well, because today it's a cool 108 degrees Fahrenheit. It's been this way for about 2 months now. True, there have been a couple of nice days, very recently in fact. About three days ago, some clouds came, and we all thought it was going to rain. We thought the monsoon was approaching its and our destiny; that soon the monsoon and we would consummate in a torrential downpour of ecstasy leaving our bodies soaking wet and our minds denumbed (ok, yes, I'm reading "Chasing the Monsoon" by a hyper-sexualized Mr. Alexander Frater and the carnal comparison lies with him - lying with India before him of course ;). But alas, it was not to be; a false alarm, an illusion, a perfect example of God's cruel sense of humor. I slept soundly that night, with dreams of the coming monsoon, but apart from a humidity that has made the heat even more intolerable, there has been no respite.

But I digress. For the point of this journal entry is not the intolerability of the heat, but the tolerability of it, and the mistake that has made it intolerable once again.

First, a word about the heat. Really, honestly, it's not as bad as people say. We've all heard Mark Twain's legendary quote: "In India, 'cold weather' is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy." Nay nay, I say, Twain dost not knowe how to liveth within India. The truth is, it's hot. But you just have to know how to adapt to it. Like anything in life, once you adapt, you realize it isn't all that bad. I was here in Varanasi, in eastern UP, when it first started becoming this hot. I did not step off the Air India flight (who comes to India via Air India anymore??) and get smacked in the face by the thick pre-stewed heat boiled in the cauldron of Indira Gandhi International Airport. I did not leave air conditioned Starbucks for the overcrowded streets of Delhi where the burning exhaust from thousands of air conditioners sticking out of cement and steel apartment buildings serve to prove the point that it is possible to make hottest hotter. No, I was here in Varanasi - I bought a gamcha, or a long piece of cloth that I wrap over my face and head to protect it from the overbearing sunshine, and I wear pajamas, a t-shirt, and slippers everywhere I go. I schedule my day around the sunshine, I don't leave my apartment in the afternoon when the sun is at it's most oppressive, and I have food delivered to me (I pay him well!!) so that I don't walk around like a befuddled wandering foreigner who has no idea what he or she is doing in India. I also, and this one took pushing and some more pushing, made sure that I had what's called an "inverter" installed in our guest house. An inverter, and its battery along with it, is a small suitcase sized contraption that keeps the electricity going once it's cutoff by the city. The electricity is created by its battery, which is why you can only really power a few CFLs and a few fans from its power. You can power more of course, but that takes big expensive inverters which is beyond the capacity of your local neighborhood guest house.

The truth is - sometimes I forget that I am actually not the one at fault in these things - the manager told me that he had an inverter already working in the guest house when I first moved in. Of course, this was true, the only thing that he didn't tell me was that his inverter was only connected to the downstairs portion of the guest house - the part of the guest house that he lives in of course. To make a long story short, he bought a new inverter, and I've had a wonderful fan that has been working to keep the sweat away ever since.

So you see, it hasn't been that bad. It may still sound bad to you, but I assure you, staying in the shade, having a fan, and oh, of course, how could I forget to tell you that I sleep outside everyday! This is a joy that modernity, and the idea that things we invent will always be better than natural adaptive solutions, has truly taken away from us (by us, I mean westerners, many other people in the world would think of nothing else than to sleep outside under the stars during the hot seasons). A mosquito net is a must where I live, but sleeping on the roof under the starry skies, a cool refreshing breeze washing over your body letting you know how good it is to be alive; it's enough to give you a deep, profound sleep no "Sounds of Nature" CD could ever fabricate.

So, it's been all good, good, in fact. Sure, the past few weeks it's gotten even hotter, and once in a while when I am incapable of doing anything productive I lie down on my bed and end up waking up to a moist pillowcase and sheet that lets me know it's time to shift my body to an unsweatified portion of the sheet and turn over my pillow. But that's ok, that's the fun of living in India, and I seemed to be managing fine.

And then came the mistake. A few days ago, yesterday, in fact, my electricity had gone for most of the afternoon. As I am writing an article, and have been writing an article for the past month, I found it necessary to go to a cyber cafe to try and continue working - as it has been much of a month and I still haven't written anything and it's time to get serious, electricity or no electricity, charged laptop or no charged laptop. So I came to a cafe I used to frequent before I moved into my current guest house which has internet access. It was very hot, the kind of hot I don't mind mind you, and the owner of the cyber cafe and I repeatedly exchanged comments on how hot the weather was. I sat down, nonchalantly using the computer, and periodically scratching my left arm and afterwards flicking the resultant dirt that collected under my nails from scratching my left arm onto the floor of the cyber cafe. Then, something unbelievable happened. The electricity came back, and I realized that the manager of Satguru, the internet cafe, has a working air conditioner in his cafe.

It was like water on dry desert sand. I never knew that life could be so good. The cool air washed over me, a deep cleansing feeling of relief that was the materialistic equivalent of a holy dip in the Ganga river. I was a born again westerner; saw the truth, the light, and the riches of the promised land. I was whole again.

The whole experience only took 10 seconds; the cyber cafe only has 6 or so computers. But it was climactic. I returned to my online research with a new vigor, ready and able with all my mental energy focused on my soon to be materialized article. I spent another three hours in the internet cafe. And then, after at least 4 hours in front of a computer, I decided that the bill for using the computer had gotten high enough; besides my eyes were starting to hurt, and it was probably time to go back to my guest house. I paid my bill, exchanged a few friendly jokes with the owner, and then opened the door to go outside.

And then it hit me. Do you remember the description of stepping off of the flight into the dense, explosive heat of Indira Gandhi National Airport? Think that, mixed with the intense smell of just-killed and bloodied chickens from the slaughterhouse next door. I had never experienced heat/chicken smell like that. It hit me like a Big Papi homerun, an other dimension where heat in air does not exist, but heat as air does. It melted into my pores, clogged my brain cells disrupting normal lines of intracellular communication and transmorgifying me into some blob of ineffective pseudo-humanness. It was oppressive, malevolent, and just plain wrong. I had never known blazing heat like that before.

Or had I? The reader will be quick to remind me that in fact, I had not magically beamed up into another dimension, but in fact, was about two blocks away from my guest house where for the past 2 months, everything has been just fine. So what happened?

The answer my friend, is that adaption only works when you don't have any other choice. Well, I actually don't know how true that is (I always wondered why people from Alaska didn't migrate to sunny San Francisco or some place mild like that). But, the truth is, I had seen better, felt better, I had seen the trees for the forest, I had thought outside of the box, I had an out of body anthropological perspective of my presently past condition. And to be honest, one you've seen the light, there is no going back. I somehow managed to squish myself back home; upon the reaching of which I felt like I was going to melt. The heat seemed unnecessarily oppressive, like a crime committed by some masked outlaw that I would never be able to bring to justice. I knew I had made an irreversible mistake.

Varanasi has grown on me, and I have grown into its comfortable routine. I did not even notice the heat the past two months; or, I did notice, but I had grown to know it, to live with it, learn from it and be one with it. It enhanced my life, it did not detract from it, I swear. But now, like a first sexual experience, the air conditioning had changed my life irrevocably. The life I had once known is no more. AC has brazenly imposed its superiority into my life, and I cannot resist its tantalizing beauty, its sinning pristine-white exterior and its temptations of a life of luxury. I have seen the wealth of the new world, and the greed in me is too strong to turn back.

I am leaving Varanasi.

This is not a love letter, this is a self-bashing apology to the city that has been my friend for so long, to a friend so clearly unworthy of your love. But you must be able to understand. I am only looking for a better life, a place where everyday life is not such a struggle, a place where I can have a house to call my own. I know that I did not feel like I was struggling before, nor am I going to buy a house, but that is besides the point.

I am sad. But what can I say, the cool hills of Darjeeling, Sikkim, Lahauti and Spiti call me for a temperatory respite. That's right, I will not leave you forever, no, our love cannot be so easily tarnished, no matter how betrayed you may feel. I will be back - when it is cooler. And I will still be here for a few more days. I think that I will finish this article as soon as possible, as the motivation, along with the temperature, is at the highest it has ever been. Thus completing, I will leave. Until then, I will be doing my work in this AC-afied cyber cafe, where my adulterous self will find the achievement of its desire. I am sorry, Varanasi; for now, at least, we must bid adieu.