Sonu wore a striped tank top and khaki shorts. He also sported a red mark on his forehead.
“Welcome.” he said. “You must be Dani. I remember your emails.”
“Sorry, we came so late.” she blushed. “Our train from Agra, it should have come yesterday morning, but—”
Sonu stopped her before she finished.
“You took the train? I’m sorry. That train is … well, it’s better you should fly next time?”
“Yes.” Dani said. “Next time we’ll fly. We’re here now. That’s all that matters, right?”
Sonu agreed and then led us into the building, through his living quarters, upstairs, and to our room on the third floor.
Along the way, he pointed my attention at the skylight cutting through all the floors from the ceilings above creating a shared courtyard the entire building could enjoy. I saw no glass covering this skylight, which instead had iron bars decorated with potted plants and hanging vines, which thrived on the seasonal rains.
“Hindu worship takes place in the home on the ground floor, but our souls must also connect to Brahma in the sky overhead.” He said.
Sonu finished as we reached our room. He told us we must treat this room as our home. He pointed at his bare feet, then to my covered feet.
“I leave my shoes at the front door outside, so I don’t bring dirt into my home,” he said. “You also should leave your shoes here outside the door, so you don’t take dirt into yours.”
Then he gave us two bottles of water and wished us goodnight.
Before the door closed, though, he turned.
“Do you want to go to the roof and see my city?” he said. “Come, I’ll show you.”
I glanced at Dani. She’d already climbed into bed.
“No,” she said as she squeezed the pillow. “But you should go.”
“Sure,” I replied.
~
Sonu and I climbed two more flights of stairs ending at a wooden doorway. The door hung ajar, letting in the dark and humid night.
“You can come here whenever you want,” Sonu said. “But I ask you always close this door to keep out the monkeys. Here, like this.”
He pulled the door shut and showed me how to work the latch: a hook piece of metal he retrofitted from a chain-link gate.
Then Sonu opened the gate again, and we stepped into the night.
On the railing nearby, silhouetted against the city lights, two monkeys sat with their tails swinging over the side of the building.
They watched us enter but didn’t otherwise move.
I followed Sonu up another flight of stairs to the highest level. This square parapet measured ten feet in each direction.
“Watch your feet,” Sonu said pointing at the metal grate forming the skylight entrance.
I stepped around it, and approached the edge of the roof.
Beyond us, crisscrossing snakes of city lights receded in three directions outlining the shape of the roads we had wandered, but turning to the fourth side, I saw nothing but darkness.
“This.” Sonu gestured towards the emptiness.
“This is the mighty Ganges. This river is a god; this river is why Hindus like me, and tourists like you and your wife arrive at Varanasi. We have temples along the riverbank.”
Sonu pointed into the distance, finding specific elements in the visual clutter and points of flickering lights.
“The Nepali Temple, here.”
“Krishna Temple, here.”
I did not see what he did. Still, I nodded for him to continue.
Then Sonu directed my attention to the shore where the conduits of lights ended and where the abrupt darkness swallowed them.
As I looked, I saw a single yellow flame above the dark like a lighthouse. I turned around and followed the black shore in the other direction to find the city lights end in the same cloud, and again, I found an orange flame.
Sonu knew what I saw.
“This is the ‘Burning Ghat.’ Varanasi has two, one on each side of us. They burn the dead at the river all day and all night. Always smoke, so they put these lights to guide the boats. The funerals are public, open to all. Tomorrow you should go, but tonight, you should sleep.”
~
I lay in the dark after as Dani slept, and the ceiling fan cut slow circles through the heat.
The city could wait until the morning.
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