Varanasi, India

All the Indians I’ve spoken to have told me how Varanasi is a lot cleaner than the cities they’ve come from—bar Indore, which ranks as India’s greenest. Meanwhile, I have felt quite overwhelmed by the air and noise pollution here. Smog restricting vision, creating a generally bleak weather and large amounts of dust on the road. My nasal pathways feel completely scratched up and sinuses inflamed. I suspect many Indians live in a constant state of inflammation. As a kid, I remember that the allergy medication “Benadryl” was a common solution we reached for, every time the dust allergies kicked into gear leading to runny noses. This was so common that I wasn’t even aware of the concept of dust allergies. Apropos to my wondering earlier about Indian men and the common presence of face fat and weak chins, I suspect a lot of it can be attributed to inflammation.

The traffic in this city is a different level of chaos. I’ve been caught up in a traffic jam of pedestrians, bicycles, cycle rickshaws, motorbikes and cars—imagine that! With ear splitting horn screeches, that, ostensibly, people use as an easy outlet for their daily frustrations.

Indoors, it’s been common for my nose to be overwhelmed by artificial perfumes which feel so toxic. This has been quite a significant physical switch in my own healing journey. I remember dousing myself in deodorants before heading out, not too long ago—say 7-8y back. I remember encountering people with high sensitivities to smells and guidelines requesting people to not use artificial scents in hippier events and scoffing at the “weakness” of humans who couldn’t “handle scents”.

“Don’t be so sensitive! You should be able to handle everything!” was a common retort I’d hear as a kid.

It fascinates me that somehow the number a human is, the more they are able to handle. The few times I’ve considered asking folks in my dorm room to not spray perfumes and deodorants inside the room (oh how horribly toxic the air would feel all of a sudden! It spreads really quickly too!), I’ve shied away from it. Afraid of being seen as weak and sensitive. Numbness creates this illusion that sensitivity is weak. Because the more I sense, the less numb I become. It’s a self-protective illusion fostered by the numbing parts inside me, that truly believe that I would not be capable of handling the horrors that live inside my body. A truth, perhaps, at the instance of time that the numbing parts were born, when I was experiencing deep trauma. But perhaps no longer true?

So instead of asking people to stop spraying the perfumes, I tried practicing connecting to the strength in the numbness. Momentarily allowing disconnection from the pain, disconnecting from my senses. A practice I honed in the depths of my cPTSD trauma triggers. I’d use all the power of my mind to remind myself that I am not my body and that if my body could have survived what implanted the trauma, then it can easily handle the reverberations of it. A conscious form of dissociation that doesn’t feel dissociative. I feel connected to my body while also feeling spaciousness within.

It’s been quite difficult to find a peaceful, quiet spot in Varanasi. All of the hostel social areas are filled with smokers blasting loud devotional music. There’s a lot of loud devotional music in India these days, often ostensibly in devotion to Shiva or the Devi—who are more intense variants of the Indian gods—more so than Krishna or Rama. The music could as well be from a typical Bollywood club. Thumping bass. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference until you paid close attention to the lyrics. I suspect Indian men are a little deaf by default. Indian men tend to talk quite loudly. I used to talk very loudly till 3-4y ago. Anytime my prana tried to settle in the quietude in my lower belly, it panicked out loudly through my throat. My unproved hypothesis is that the louder a man talks, the more repressed shit he carries. Because as his throat opens, the repressed parts in him simultaneously attempt to speak to him and all he can do then is to yell even louder to quell their quiverings.

Thumping loud music at 10am in the mornings. Music that’d be in the fifth wave of an Ecstatic Dance—where people are absolutely going nuts on the dance floor. Instead you have a bunch of humans sitting around, smoking and scrolling on their phones. Can they not feel the impulse, that I often feel, when I hear such music, to move? I can feel the thumps vibrating through my being requiring great presence to let it all flow through.

A bit minor compared to all else I’ve ranted about above but the lights! All of the lights I’ve encountered in India have been 6500K+. Viz. white light as contrasted with soft yellow mood lighting. I can feel how relaxed my body feels when the lighting is softer. The bright white light feels jarring past sunset, pre sunrise. It’s a mystery to me how we copulate at the rate we do, without any mood lighting anywhere whatsoever.

I’m headed tomorrow from AQI 150 to AQI 400 in New Delhi. I don’t suppose I’ll be spending much time outside at all. It’s pretty wild that this training is happening in New Delhi of all places. I feel quite committed to bringing sexual healing work to India and this pilgrimage has only given me a glimpse of the gravity of what would be required. I wonder though, if the people, who I believe need this work, themselves believe they need it? The despair in me says No.

I’m sitting with the question—am I truly willing to commit myself to sexual healing work in India, in a manner that it reaches the non-elites too? And not in a self-aggrandizing, martyr fashion of asking. Genuine, honest wondering.

Honestly, the answer might just be No. Retreating into a cave—one of the 10 nice spots on the planet that hippies shuttle between—to study Math and Physics feels a lot simpler.

Pictured:

My swollen, inflamed face in a small, (relatively) quiet temple I found at one of the ghats and a kid who walked up and innocently observed me from a distance