A watering-place front on the ocean's
shore does not end more suddenly and completely. There is nothing that I
have seen with which to compare the north bank of the Ganges, with the
morning sun on its many-coloured facades and towers, but Venice. As one
is rowed slowly down the river it is of Venice that one instinctively
thinks. As in Venice, the palaces are of various colours, pink and red
and yellow and blue, and the sun has crumbled their facades in the same
way. But there is this difference--that over the Benares roofs the
monkeys scamper.
Gradually Venice is forgotten as the novel interest of the scene
captures one's whole attention. At each of the ghauts (a landing place
or steps) variegated masses of pilgrims--no matter how early the hour,
and to see them rightly one ought to start quite by six--are making
their ablutions and deriving holiness from the yellow tide. You saw them
yesterday trudging wearily through the streets, the sacred city at last
reached; and here they are in their thousands, brown and glistening.
They are of every age: quite old white-bearded men and withered women,
meticulously serious in their ritual, and then boys and girls deriving
also a little fun from their immersion. Here and there the bathing ghaut
is diversified by a burning ghaut, and one may catch a glimpse of the
extremities of the corpse twisting among the faggots. Here and there is
a boat or raft in which a priest is seated under his umbrella, fishing
for souls as men in punts on the Thames fish for roach.
Pages:
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62