Chapter 89 I refuse to say it's beautiful

Yesterday's diary still happily wrote about the magnificent night when I crossed the Ganges, but now when I pick up the pen, the image in front of me has completely changed.I was full of joy yesterday because I visited Sarnath, but now I can't feel joy.The reason is that we finally went to the banks of the Ganges and saw the world-famous Ganges morning bath. Departure at 5 o'clock in the morning, stop at the intersection near the river, and walk there.The river is already very crowded, half of them are beggars, and a large number of them are leprosy beggars, who are left to wander outside somehow.

I quickly hired a boat, jumped on it one by one, and immediately opened it. I was floating on the Ganges, but my mood was not yet relaxed.Several small boats have surrounded us, all of them are hawkers, and we can't drive them away, so we can only let them parasitize beside our boat and ignore them. The view of the river bank from the boat is amazing.All the way are dirty and dilapidated houses of all kinds, neither an old house nor a new one.It is all those poor-quality cement houses that have been built sloppily for forty or fifty years, each with large and small steps leading to the water.

Most of the houses are small cheap inns, some of the tenants stay for a day or two to take a bath, and some stay for a longer period of time to wait to die.Those who are waiting to die have to bathe every day, so the house and steps are crowded with all kinds of people. More people can't even afford to live in small inns, especially the old people who come to wait to die.Do you know when you are going to die?How can there be so much money to stay in a hotel?Then they can only live in disarray on the river bank, with piles of tattered luggage beside them. They will not leave, because according to the custom here, death on the banks of the Ganges can be cremated free of charge, and the ashes are dumped into the Ganges.If you leave and die halfway, you will miss the Ganges.You can think about it, so many people who are waiting to die like ants sleep on the riverside, how much excrement do they have every day?So the whole bank of the river stinks.

At this moment, the sky was still dark and the temperature was still low. Countless dark people were soaking in the river, and some of them could be seen shivering from the cold.The men are shirtless and only wear a pair of shorts. They can be of any age, mainly the elderly, very fat or thin, and rarely in between.Women wearing veils, only middle-aged and elderly, dived headlong into the water, their gray hair was entangled with the gauze scarves, drank two sips and came out again.No one smiled, and no one was seen talking. Everyone was soaking and drinking in silence. A few middle-aged men and women squatted on the steps to brush their teeth. No one used a toothbrush, half with their fingers and half with a branch. After brushing, they swallowed the water and then took a few handfuls to drink. It was just like the direction in which people in other countries spit water when brushing their teeth. on the contrary.

A policeman came and fiddled with an old man lying on the bank of the river, apparently dead, on the banks of the Ganges last night or this morning.No one paid attention to this scene, and everyone was already used to it. The dead will be dragged not far away to be cremated in a government crematorium.But ordinary people would never go into that crematorium. As long as they had some money, they would definitely go to the crematorium by the river.The corpse burning pit is close to the river surface and has become a part of the river bed. A boat of firewood is moored by the water, and corpses wrapped in colored cloth are lined up on the side of the boat.

The burning continued and the stench was overwhelming, made even more suffocating by the workers dousing spoonfuls of spiced grease.Not only can all this be seen by everyone, but it has become the most important landscape on the banks of the Ganges.There is a large area of ​​shabby houses around the burning corpse pits, all of which have been blackened by the continuous smoke and fire for many years. About ten meters away from the fire and smoke, there was half a dead cow floating, with the cavity outside, and wild dogs were gnawing on it.A few steps further on, a row of men were brushing their teeth and swallowing water, mouthful after mouthful.

We are too fragile. Seeing this, we all lay down on the edge of the boat and couldn't stand up. We wanted to churn out everything in our stomachs. I ask the reader to excuse me for having to resort to some uncomfortable descriptions, which are quite different from my aestheticist habits.I don't want to use this to show my contempt for another nation, but I also don't want to hide my attitude towards the landscape in front of me, because the sorrow here concerns all human beings. As a human being, you should know some basic do's and don'ts.It is very difficult to find a dead elephant in the world, because even elephant herds know how to cover up.Thanks again to our pre-Qin philosophers, who taught the Chinese people so much early on: don’t see, don’t listen to, don’t act, don’t do to others what you don’t want, sometimes it seems to be stricter, but there is no Prohibition, why is there civilization?How can there be a society without fences?If there is no covering, why is there any shame?How can there be a circle without rules?

On the banks of the Ganges, what I saw was that human filth, ugliness, and death can all be exaggeratedly exposed, and can be released to others and nature without restraint. Due to the population explosion, this behavior is turning into an unprecedented gathering, and huge crowds are coming to the river day and night. Saying that you want to rely on the Ganges River from beginning to end, is actually ruining the Ganges River without leaving any room for your whole life.I resentfully thought that in the early years when the Ganges River was paid off and people’s faces could still be seen, people would at least know a little bit of shame. What kind of person is a person who has been congested by the river for a long time waiting to die, and after he dies, he still throws the residue of his life in the river to float and show off?

I know that someone will explain to me how clean a nation is washed by the river every day, how poetic a picture of a man and woman bathing together in the morning mist is, and how much an ancient civilized habit needs to be respected.This is just like someone who has been advising me to write more relaxed and happy, and stop being so competitive and heavy.I completely reject all these explanations and persuasions.In the future, even if there are a thousand reasons for me to say a few words about the beauty of the Ganges morning bath, my answer is: the eyes do not agree, and the conscience does not agree.What I saw there was not a backward custom, but a human tragedy, so I had to compete and be heavy.

The foul smoke and dust all melted into the morning mist, and above the other bank of the Ganges, a faint red light set off a round of rising sun. There was no dazzling light, but it just rose quietly.I looked at the rising sun and thought to myself, how much patience does it have for humans? When the sun shines on the shore, I suddenly found that on the high concrete platform closest to the water by the river, there was sitting a woman wrapped tightly in a white cloth and only showing her face. She was expressionless and didn't even turn her eyes, like a clay sculpture Generally sitting in the cold morning breeze.What surprised us even more was that she looked neither like a Japanese woman nor a Korean woman, but she was clearly a Chinese woman!Probably an overseas Chinese, I don't know where he came from.

Must have encountered something, or made a decisive choice?We couldn't find any reason to call her or approach her, but just looked up at her together, hoping she would see us and let us do something for her.We were all shouting in our hearts: Go back, where did you come from! December 21, 1999, Varanasi, overnight at Taj Ganges Hotel