God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West.
If our nation took to similar exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.
Mahatma Gandhi

As I left the side of Mother Ganges I felt a lump in my throat, a definite twinge of sadness. I had been witness to the most intimate rites of life and death in this holy city of Varanasi (Benares during British rule), the city of Shiva, the culmination of 5000 years of Indian history untainted by European meddling. This was India at the dawn of the 21st century, with her common courtesy, the wink of an eye, and her impossible dilemma.

As I walked the streets one last time, crowded with Hinduism, I encountered more of this nation that is an assault on the Western senses: shabby kids with bright eyes and head lice; homeless people sleeping on the streets with mangy dogs; women working; men not working; pregnant women carrying huge top loads; men squatting, talking politics, and spitting; the smell of urine and piles of poop everywhere; and hordes of sad faced people wandering waywardly about.

India is a place to expect the unexpected, which makes travel there so difficult, and yet so inimitibly fascinating at the same time. Love it or hate it (and I did both), India jostles all of you, body and soul. After a month I was ready to go home, and after a month at home I was ready to go back. Somehow India knows this, and thus the wink.