Globalisation

is eating kimchi fried rice on a Varanasi rooftop with a British girl picking at her dhaal curry.



















I still remember that Varanasi terrace at the Shanti guesthouse, looking out at the river Ganga at night, and waking up in the mornings to have breakfast with the gang after a soul-soothing boat ride down the Ganges in the dewey sweet dawn to the smell of incense and wood. And then going for walks down Varanasi's chaotic streets and markets, weaving through the crowd and squeezing by stalls with sense-assaulting arrays of weird and wonderful spices, incense being burnt, perfumeries, jewellery stores, rows of technicolour silk saris - which Varanasi is famous for - hung from the eaves of shoplots... A golden temple with red-faced monkeys, soldiers in khaki on patrol with slung rifles after the Jaipur bombings (drinking chai), Indian women that gracefully pass by balancing pots on their heads, and milk-boys dart through the crowd with dented metal urns of fresh goat milk for delivery. In a corner the chai-wallah (tea man, literally) stirs his boiling pot after tilting in half a bag of sugar, cinnamon, and milk. Cows pass and stop in the middle of narrow busy alleys to nibble on trash.


























Bell, a Varanasi street, late May 2008.