India, 2017
“I’m Rocky,” our boatman said.
He stood on the docks, barefoot, “London rodeo” T-shirt, palms like oars. His eyes, which peered over his graying beard, hinted of more youth than his worn body otherwise suggested.
“Rocky … from Assi Ghat.”
“Hi,” Dani said, as we followed him onboard, taking care to avoid touching the water that lapped at its shifting sides. His boat was a triangular wooden vessel, with makeshift paddles of bolted-together driftwood.
Rocky collected our fare. Dani tried offering him a tip by letting him keep the change, but Rocky rejected it.
“Boss Man takes half,” he said, nodding toward the dock, to a man wearing a bright pink shirt, silver watch, and wayfarer sunglasses on his clean-shaven face.
Then, quieter: “I do all the work.” He flexed his back and laughed.
Right on cue, “Boss Man” walked over, collected Rocky’s earnings, and pushed our little boat off with the heel of his shiny boot.
~
Rocky dipped his paddle into the river, and soon had us moving downstream, rowing with practiced ease. Then he asked if I wanted to try. Of course, I did. I felt confident as I grabbed the oars, but that quickly evaporated. Dani smiled at me as I carved the boat in circles. With Rocky’s guidance then, I brought us back on track to make slow progress upstream. Control, he showed me, was more about resistance than effort.
A hundred yards later, Rocky reclaimed the ship’s oars, while I reclaimed my spot with Dani at the stern.
I felt an item in my pocket stab me then, and I reached in and found the booklet given to us at the monkey temple.
Rocky saw it and at once snatched it from my hands.
“This is my god,” he said.
He kissed the booklet, tapped it to his forehead. “Hanuman helped Rama when…”
He named a story I didn’t know, and I nodded politely. He’d have nodded too if I’d mentioned “Jesus and Lazarus.”
~
As we went down the river, our boatman pointed at palaces lining the shore. “King Jaipur,” “King Udaipur,” and “King Agra,” he said. Then he pointed our attention to another building near one of these.
“This is my house,” he said.
We couldn’t know for certain what room, or building he referred to, but we knew he didn’t mean “house.”
Dani felt for him, and this gave her another chance to offer a tip, far from the eyes of his manager.
This time, he accepted, and at once, he pulled to shore.
Rocky returned a moment later, a fresh water bottle in one hand, his mouth oozing with crimson liquid he spat over his shoulder into the water, and he continued his laborious journey down the river.
~
Our boatman next pointed at the municipal water pump towers rising from the river like sacred objects.
“Holy Water.” He mouthed the words in unspoken reverence as we passed.
“Holy,” I repeated flatly, glancing to shore where a group of men bathed unbothered in the river. And just then, a child’s body drifted face-down past our bow.
Rocky angled his oars so he wouldn’t touch her. He didn’t look away, and neither could I; dead bodies in Varanasi, it seemed, were as normal as breakfast.
~
We reached the end when Rocky pulled into Maharajah Ghat—a place we had glimpsed briefly the night before. As we docked, a man climbed aboard, bringing a stark reminder of the city’s harsher realities. His story echoed what we’d heard elsewhere that day, but he said it with more urgency:
“People arrive in Varanasi to die,” he said. “These buildings around us are convalescent communities, and hospices filled with people waiting to die; filled with people waiting to go to ‘heaven.’ They spend all their money on end-of-life care and can’t afford cremation. Did you see all those pallets of wood by the dock? It takes two hundred kilograms of wood to burn a body; this costs 6,000 rupees. Patients in my hospital can’t afford this. Please, help. Buy wood and save their soul.”
I forgot then the conversation Sonu had with me at our hotel last night, standing on the rooftop as he gave me a spin tour of his city.
“I am Hindu,” he’d said. “This is my religion and my culture. It’s my responsibility to help the poor here and give to charity. When you go out tomorrow, they will ask you for money, but you are tourists, and this isn’t for you. You are here to learn and experience. Do not give them your money.”
I heard Sonu’s rooftop counsel—“listen first”—and still handed him money.