Where…Jesus sits on a mat in Varanasi

 

It’s HOT in Delhi in April.

 

The sidewalks are dusty, each persons strides bring up whirling dervishes that bite at the ankles and coat the skin. The traffic fumes in the city hover above the roads and cloak the people in fog as they go about in cacophonous, frenzied activity, unabated by the rising mercury. In the countryside lakes are drying up, as though their edges are being chased back by the sunshine itself, shrinking into themselves until cooler winds prevail.

 

At night-time we retreat to the city rooftops to seek solace in the wispy evening breeze, waiting for a breath to lift the heavy calm under the starlit sky.

 

And, as I journey on, I find myself in Varanasi, by the shores of Mother Ganges.

 

‘A holy river in a holy city’.

 

The heat does not abate, but keeps on pounding down. 

 

I am here to explore, to learn, to ‘be’, to read and write and dream in this intoxicating landscape of otherness.

 

But, I am thwarted.

 

Thwarted by my normally Cast Iron constitution that allows me to eat or drink anything that takes my choosing, which has obviously found the heat too intense and decided to up and go, leaving me at the mercy of whatever bug is ravaging my system.

 

It could have been the bread I shared in the park with the family who were so intrigued by my hair and insisted I join them, taking sneaky pictures on their mobile phones when they thought I wasn’t looking.  It could have been the not-quite-boiled tea that the Chai-Wallah pedalled to me, singing his lilting refrain as he came down the carriages of the train, swinging his metal can of sweet and fragrant goodness. It could have been the sticky sweet pastry I ate at the station, drenched in sugar and visited by a fair few of the army of flies that the seller was valiantly waging war against with his rolled up newspaper.

 

Whatever it is, and wherever it came from, it wins for a fair few days.

 

It’s all I can do to leave my room to walk up the lane to the bakery and then sit in the shade of the trees by the Ghat on the river and sip at flattened Soda and eat small pieces of warm fresh salted paratha, watching the boats and the people washing in the river, gently bidding my system to restore its balance and afford me the freedom to wander and explore, unabated.

 

I pass a chap each morning as I wander to my bakery of choice. He sits on a mat at the corner of the lane, his withered legs tucked under him, a bowl set out on the mat for those passing to throw their change into.  He smiles at me as I walk past, and I smile back. And he never asks me for money. Maybe he sees the wan look on my face and the slightly awkward gait of a person who is not sure how her insides will choose to behave at any given point. And he gives me grace in the moment.

 

It’s not until three days into my gentle restoring of self that I stop and sit down by his mat and ask him his name, explaining that I’ve been out of sorts but that I’ve appreciated his smiles each day. His name is Ali, and he tells me some of his story – about how he gets up early and gets a friend to help him onto a Tuk-Tuk to come down here and unroll his mat and sit at the corner of a well trodden way to the riverside.  He talks of how he never asks, never cajoles, never uses guilt to motivate people to give, but he smiles and offers the freedom to respond should people choose. And he gets by. We share a paratha and I journey on.

 

It’s now a couple of days later, and my strengthening body is affording me the joy of exploring this place. The river with its colours and mayhem and characters, the side streets with its temples and dust and watermelon sellers, the Ghats that line the waters with their various functions, with the scent of cremation and the sound of wailing hanging heavy on the air at Manikarnika Ghat, a sacred place for the peoples to come and say their last goodbyes to their loved ones before their ashes join with Mother Ganges on their journey to the ‘next’.

 

 

I head out onto the waters in the dusk to watch the sun sink below the horizon and float on the water, hovering at Dasaswamedh Ghat as the Ganga Aarti takes place, where the conch is blown and the incense is waved and the lamps are swung in hypnotic rhythms as puja plates are floated into the waters, filled with petals and candles that transform the river into watery starlight.

 

 

 

Varanasi is an assault on the senses and, as I make my way back to my room that evening, I find myself overwhelmed.

 

I sit on my bed and I sob. 

 

Salty tears are running down my cheeks as I wrestle with both the beauty and the darkness of a place in which I’m finding it hard to see where Jesus is amongst the offerings and the burnings and the rhythms of a life that ranks its peoples in castes. 

 

In that moment all I want to do is to open up my arms and gather up the ‘untouchable’, used by society for the tasks that are deemed beneath them, but ignored and invisible whenever they have lost their usefulness. 

 

I want to gather them in my arms and love them and speak words to them of the person that is Jesus, of hope and life and freedom. I want to speak to them of a world that is bigger than this existence, of an ordering where the last come first and the first come last, where they are invited to the table, in the best seats at the banquet.

 

And I think of Ali, sat on his mat.  I think of his quiet, gentle soul, deemed untouchable by those around him. I think of his beautiful smile and his open heart, inviting people to sustain his life with his well placed bowl, yet not demanding anything.

 

And I think that I haven’t given him anything. We shared bread and stories, but I haven’t given him anything.

 

And I ask God what I should do because, at that moment, I want to head out into the night to find him and speak the words of truth that were hidden in our encounters.

 

And God reminds me of the lame man at the city gate known as ‘Beautiful’, placed there every day to beg from those going into the temple.  I’m reminded of Peter and John as they head to prayer and encounter him, and see his story, and speak truth into and over him. “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”

 

And I’m challenged right there, in my room by the river, with streams of salty tears on my face, that I am to do the same.

 

As the sun rises and the activity along the river starts, I get dressed and ready to head outside to meet Ali, the words of my conversation with God from the previous night still ringing in my ears. I will buy bread, ask Ali if I can join him, and if he allows I will sit, share story and table and tell him of Jesus, the one who brings life. I will ask him if he will allow me to pray. Because I have nothing else to give him but my prayer, and the truth of the one I follow.

 

As I round the corner to Ali’s chosen place I see an empty spot, a spot normally filled by a gentle, smiling soul, sat atop a ragged mat. I ask where he might be, and the people shrug.  I go back later to find that the place is still without Ali. And the next morning too.

 

And then, it is time for me to leave this place, and Ali is nowhere to be seen.

 

As I pack my sack to head for the trains I ask God some questions about those moments in my room that night, where my heart was broken wide open and, in the breaking, I glimpsed truth and beauty and life, and was invited once more to be a bearer of the Kingdom.

 

In that moment I am rendered breathless as the whisper of God speaks, ‘it was me. When you saw Ali, you saw me.  You were looking for me everywhere in the chaos and beauty and darkness of this place and I was right there, sat on a mat down the lane from you.’

 

And I wondered why I hadn’t seen it sooner.  I wondered that, like the disciples who only recognised the resurrected Jesus when he broke the bread, were my eyes so closed?

 

‘To love another person is to see the face of God.’

 

The lesson stayed with me as I wound my way back to Delhi, to join the Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity at their orphanage.

 

And there I meet Jefriel. A small, beautiful albino boy, abandoned and alone except for the care he received from the sisters and the rough and tumble of his room mates, living side by side in the many cots that lined the walls.

 

He has some learning difficulties and a twisted hand that, after but a brief moment in the presence of his smile, you don’t notice anymore. And the sisters explain to me that he will go to Kolkata to live with the brothers there when he gets older, because…oh, because…no-one wants him.  Who would adopt this little one with his pale skin and his twisted hand when there are perfectly formed little ones, ready for a home.

 

And my heart broke open again. 

 

But this time I was more ready for it.

 

Because I was in the presence of Jesus.

For the few days I was there, as I held his hand and loved him and cuddled him and prayed in my heart for his future, I saw the face of God.

 

And, oh, he is so very,very beautiful.