Varanasi Bracelet

© Ellen Blonder

Last December when I was in Varanasi, India, I stood near a raised platform next to a woman selling a few dusty items from her tarp on the ground. I was talking to my friend, oblivious, when I felt the woman tug at my pant leg. Without understanding a word between us, she pulled a clean tarp from her basket and motioned that I should spread it on the platform so I could sit without getting dirty. She asked nothing in return. 

I was so stunned it took me until I saw her again to purchase a few of her string bracelets, to remind myself such open kindness exists, even from the most destitute.

The one sketched here is attached to my laptop case, and it keeps me from getting too wrapped up in my own problems.

India-Textures

© Ellen Blonder

Even when ornament is weathered or absent, textures and patterns are around every corner in Varanasi.

India-Art Everywhere

© Ellen Blonder

Art abounds in India. In Varanasi, that includes the painted doorway along a random alley, and the extraordinary painting around the door to our bathroom at the Ganges View Hotel.

India-Serenity Anywhere

© Ellen Blonder

I haven't posted lately because I was in India for the first time. Here are a couple of photographs I took in Varanasi. The first is of a boat on the Ganges, the second is of a woman texting from her narrow perch on a bicycle rickshaw. She possesses the serenity of the people on the boat, even though she's bouncing through a sea of wild, heavy traffic.