Hardwar: Religious Mecca

India Trip II

The greater portion of my stay, sandwiched between stints in New Delhi, took place in Hardwar, a city of great history and religious meaning, which also suffers from the same flaws as New Delhi. There you will find the same poverty mingled with grandeur, both historical and modern, and there also you will find hardy people willing to help at whatever cost, and people who selfishly believe in only themselves and their own pursuit of wealth. Therefor I will try to not repeat anything said in the post about New Delhi, and will instead focus on what is unique and splendid (and some of what is not so) about Hardwar.

I stayed at my grandmas house the whole time, and it is quite the luxurious abode as Indian standards go, but I've never felt colder in my life, and that's on everything. The thing is, even though it's much warmer compared to the freezing temps of New England or upstate New York, every building I've lived in has been heated, and so the night offers some respite from the cold, and at home it's comfortable enough to walk around in a sweater. But heating is not a custom in India, so it was freezing all day inside the house, and while it was slightly warmer outside, there was not much difference, save when the sun peeked out through the haze. And while many Indians strive for a house such as this one, I do not think that an American would wish it upon their enemies to live there, for not only is it incredibly cold with no heat in the winter, it is unbearably hot with no AC in the summer. The electricity and water come and go as they please, and while they are much improved, you never know when it'll go out, or when it'll come back. Instead of a shower, bathing is done with buckets of water in an ancient, but effective, system. And while I could speak on the house for a whole post, I feel it's important to at least mention two of the highlights of my time in Hardwar; the markets and the Ganges River. 

The picture you see above was taken by me, as were all the pictures in these posts, at the local vegetable market where we lived in Hardwar. I had a lot of memories of that place, given the extended time I've spent at my grandma's house in the past, and it was just as I recollected it; hundreds of vendors selling fresh fruit and vegetables at ludicrously cheap prices, of which I'll speak more in another post, and cows roaming hither and thither, nibbling on the produce as vendors beat them away with newspaper rolls. It was an eye opening experience, to see so much fresh food sitting there in heaps, with people aplenty to sell it, especially when the food buying process in America is so detached, so cold even, that we're accustomed to buying fruits and vegetables which have been sitting on trucks for shipment for ages, and are picked, not in accordance with ripeness, but rather with color upon arrival. There was a certain gritty beauty to the Hardwar market, and I shall not soon forget it. 

There is a great story behind the Ganges River, which I will not get into here, but look it up if you're into classical Hindu myths for some reason. That river has incredible religious meaning, and millions of Indians flock to it throughout the year to bathe and pray in it, and while I'll cover its pollution and degradation in another post, here I'll simply review my own experience.

Even in the heart of winter, when the air temperature was not more than 60F and the water could not have been much warmer than freezing, there were still hundreds of people lining the river bank, and a few brave souls, perhaps fortified by faith, were taking full baths in the river, and were laughing as they were probably catching hypothermia. Needless to say, I did not risk my health in such a manner, and resolved to simply dip my feet in the river. Even that numbed my feet, and I didn't fully regain feeling in them until we were back in the heated car on the way home. Interestingly enough, I did feel some religious stirrings in that place, as I felt compelled to remove my "Om" chain and soak it in the water, saying a few Hindu mantras as I did so. As I said in my post "On God", I'm not exactly a religious person, but the Ganges changed me, and my spirituality, if not my belief in God, deepened.

But as I said, Hardwar carries with it many of the same severe downsides as New Delhi, such as air which developed in me a smoker's cough within a few days of my arrival, extreme wealth disparity, deplorable sanitation, and unchecked development in a system which ingrains in it's youth that success must come at all costs. These things did not impair my stay too much, save the aforementioned smoker's cough, but they certainly were devastating in that they leave little hope for the renewal of India's glory. I'll touch more on this again in my post on Pollution, but there seems to be no end in sight to India's decay, and it's ironic that that decay is sharing space with such incredible innovation. Hardwar is a place in which the best of India is at display, but the worst also comes to light.