Die in Varanasi

Benaras, also known as Varanasi, or Kashi, is the place many people visit to die. They stay here waiting. In waiting they see the flames burning 24 hours, 365 days a year at the cult Manikarnika Ghat where apparently Parvathi lost her earring. This ghat is always busy with activity. There are the drug dealer boys who I befriended just to get a peak into their lives. They all had white girlfriends. They were fashion conscious. They wanted me to make a film about them and call it "Fun of the Life". What a perfect title. I loved talking to them in English in those dark corridors of Manikarnika. Over chai. Listening to their stories was fun. I imagined their on-the-edge lives in the dark alleyways of Benaras. Their red right hands dealing drugs and making joints, the same hands rowing boats and eating food, opening beer bottles and drinking chai. This was their life. They were the boys of Manikarnika, their eyes saw a thousand things, their hearts shrunk to the size of a peanut. All they wanted was money, women and charas. There existed nothing beyond this. They partied on the boats during the festivals, their eyes glistening from the fire of the pyres. After spending an afternoon with them, I would walk back slowly through the gulleys back to Assi, back into the silence of Ganesh Ojha house...