Dakshineshwar

Today we went to Dakshineshwar and Belur Math, and left home at 3:15 a.m. to do so. That itself was amusing enough through the haze that always accompanies sleep-deprivation, and once we all passed out in the car, it was actually quite an enjoyable drive. Once we were there, we Stepped out into the Pre-dawn Darkness on the Bank of the Ganges. It would have been that romantic too were it not for that layer of spit, slime, ooze, muck and assorted raw sewage that lies around the periphery of almost all sites of mass worship in India. Tirupati, for example, is a filthy place, and I can't even think about Haridwar without feeling sick. So, anyway, we took off our shoes and walked into the temple complex proper, where we saw a bunch of Kali Bhakts chanting at the entrance to the Kali temple, with brief but frequent exclamations of protest at people jumping line, at people blocking their view, at people yelling at people yelling about people blocking their view and at other people for just being there at all. Remember that the background for this fish-market like atmosphere is the lovely fresh morning breeze wafting over the Ganges and the continuous perpetual chanting that was like the Duracell bunny. We finally left in disgust to get good front-row seats at the Krishna mandir a little way down, where once the attendant/guard unbarred the door, the priest began the puja with an occasional wave of the offering towards his audience. It looked inane, and thankfully, was over really fast. We tried waiting outside the gates of the Belur Math for a while after that, but the human excrement there made that an odious task, so we went for a quick boat ride up and down the lovely Ganga, where we saw only two dead bodies of large non-human mammals and thanks to favourable winds didn't really have to inhale the diesel fumes emerging from the engine of our boat and the million others like it. When we finally returned to the Math, one of us was seriously indisposed with Uncontrollable Bowel Movements, and had to rush to the loo, where for the princely sum of 50p he got to relieve himself. The people bathing in the river within the Math grounds were also a distraction from the peaceful grounds and beautiful architecture; to be frank, they were an eyesore. I suppose that if they'd been content with a mere dip to cleanse their sins rather than a full-fledged bath with soap and shampoo to cleanse their mortal vessels too, it might have at least had the air of something somewhat distantly approaching semi-pious. I hated the place, but it's worth seeing at least once.