I've been in Canada for four months now, Tonight we were talking about India, and I thought that I want to write more about it, simply because I remember so much more about it.

I met a woman in an internet stop (Sify. What kind of a name is Sify, says Canadian Bashu, as opposed to Indian Bashu who just accepted it), and this woman was the quintessential Varanasi visitor.

I was sitting at a computer, probably writing in this blog. There were two computers in that shop, and it was tiny. If you walked out the door, first you would walk back in because you forgot to pay, then you would walk back out and be on a street which goes straight down to Asi Ghat. You can see the river.

Of course you wouldn't know it when you're inside because it's kept hygienically dark. It's a refuge. Honestly, the internet was a refuge for us when we were in India.

So a beautiful woman in a deep blue salwar kameez suit walks into an internet stop and talks in a Spanish accent to the Indian proprietor. He asks me if I'm going to use the computer much longer, I say yes. So he turns on the other one, and she sits down. I don't really know what she was doing, although I'll say that it was always hard to not see what the guy next to you is doing at an internet cafe. It's as if you're thirsty for authentic Western activities. You feel good when you look over and catch someone on Myspace.

And here I am, and this (I assume) Spanish woman asks me why I am in Varanasi. I mull it over for a while. Why am I in Varanasi. Why am I in Varanasi. Why. Am I.....

I finally answer: "Music." She accepts it.

I ask her: What about you?

She says: "Music." I accept it.

"And the lord Shiva."

That's the sort of person who gravitates to Varanasi. It's a pretty groovy place. To tell the truth, as I was thinking about that tonight, I felt this ache to go back to the city, to tell that woman that she embodied all that was quirky about the tourists of Varanasi, just to walk in those incredibly shoved streets, to give up and head east until you hit the river, and to just walk along relatively incredibly empty stairs and plazas, from one end of the city to the other. To give a monkey a peanut. To ask someone why they are in Varanasi, to be asked Why Am I In Varanasi, to be asked, what country I am from to be asked, rickshaw sir.

To have a suit made! And feel good because no matter what happens, I have a suit and it will meet me back home.

To feel the peace. I didn't notice it when I was there. All I noticed was this wanting-to-stay. We can skip a few days of Khajuraho, a few days of Delhi, for some more sweet Varanasi. People know about the shanti, they identify it, they don't feel embarrassed or amused that they're coming back for their seventh time because they know why. There is a strange peace that you can't avoid. I only grokked it just sitting in Canada.

To sit at an internet cafe, to pour my nervous fingers into words that I have been composing all day long. I think I was desensitised in India. I would watch a man strike a dog with a stick and I would want to scream, but instead write words about it in my head.

And watch my mother scream at the man instead.

Desensitised not just to violence either. I would sit in a rickshaw on the wrong street, I know it's the wrong street and I've known it for a while but didn't know I knew it, three people on a two-person rickshaw and nobody said anything, and as we turned around I would watch the driver's beaten up calves pumping and try not to see the expression on his face, and I would write words about it in my head.

I have more to write, I know I do. I just don't have the inclination. I'll be tilted more and it will all come falling out, you'll see.

-Bashu