Eating Apple Pie In India

To start off, I should probably explain the title of my blog. In 2005, I spent a semester of undergrad in India, Nepal, and Tibet. While in India one of the cities that I visited was Varanasi. Varanasi is situated on the Ganges and as the legend goes, the city was found by the Hindu deity, Shiva, about 5,000 years ago, making it one of the holiest cities in India. The photo above is one that I took while boating down the river at around 6am.

At sunrise and sunset the river becomes congested with people washing their clothes, brushing their teeth, and bathing in the holy waters of the Ganges. As a foreigner the mere thought of touching the water is mortifying. It is highly polluted with trash, human waste, and ash from the cremation ghats, but locals are immune to the pollutants and nothing will deter them from remitting their sins by means of bathing in the Ganges.

At the time that I took the above picture I was taking a boat ride, which to my surprise was headed straight for the cremation ghats. The boat docked right at the edge of one ghat in which the only direction I could walk was straight through one of the cremation sites. I of course felt extremely uncomfortable doing this but a man grabbed my hand and led me straight through stopping me just a couple feet from a burning body. The mans intention was to bring me on a “tour” of the site in which I could then pay him for his services. I found this “tour” and my presence at this holy event to be unbelievably disrespectful so I quickly dismissed myself.

In the couple minutes that I was standing in front of a human body being cremated my mind went blank. I was not disgusted. I was not sad. I was not really shocked in any way. All that really came to mind was the idea of impermanence. We really are just flesh and blood.

I somewhat numbingly found a rickshaw to take me back to my hostel and then I decided it was time to eat after that unforeseen adventure. I walked down the riverbank to a restaurant that I was told about that had great pizza and surprisingly, had fantastic apple pie. Usually, when you want a slice of home (no pun intended) in a foreign country and it is in the form of food, don’t do it! The idea of eating apple pie in India was so bizarre to me but I thought, “oh what the hell I am not going to be here forever, right?”

So as the sun was setting and what seemed like the whole city poured into the river to practice their daily bathing rituals, I sat and ate the best apple pie I have ever had.