Nya Makan (New House)

I have moved.  I have moved to a wonderful new home.  A home.  My first place where I actually feel at home, of course excluding my Rockford home.
It happened by chance that I saw a sheet detailing a room for rent and I inquired about possible other rooms and this place revealed itself to me!

Before yesterday I was living in an extremley comfortable middle class home with courtyard (soon to be paved in marble) with a housekeeper and a maid.  I had a clean and large room.  I had peace and quiet.  I had a wonderful kitchen.  I had filtered water

Today I live in a third floor walk up.  I have the space for a kitchen but no utensils, stove, gas, nor food.  I share a bathroom with four other people.  I am woken up by the clang of temple bells at 7 in the morning.  My room is small and dingy, but clean.

Why would I do this, you may ask (the thought has yet to cross my mind-- this place is to perfect).  The courtyard house, while beautiful, cut me off to India.  Daily I would forget I was India.  I was in a bubble and if I continued to stay there I would never see Varanasi as my home.  I felt like a guest (the Indian term is Paying Guest) and I felt like the space was never mine.

This new house is immediately on the ghat, the river flows right past the house and I am literally fifteen seconds from the stairs leading to the Ganga.  The house is ringed in by temples and is in the middle of a tangled artery of lanes.  I have left the periphery, the comfort of my bubble, for this wonderful new experience.  This switch is not some type of ironic slumming, or some romantic fantastic foray into poverty.  No instead it is an attempt to integrate my self more fully into my Indian life, to never forget I am in India, and to really try something new and different.  But of course it is all very romantic.

I feel so much at home.  Banaras is my home in a way no city has ever been (well maybe Abensberg and Rockford)