And also when I saw the ghat where they burn the bodies and scatter the ashes into the ganges, and when I had first come and visited the assi ghat, and when I saw so many people meeting there, separated from each other by untraversible chasms, and I wondered that something has still brought them to one place, and I looked at the holy ganges, and I perceived why it was revered through the ages as a mother, and tears filled my eyes that it was perhaps the meaning of my life to come here, and see the rituals and perhaps wonder at the meaning of my life, and I felt never so content as I was when I sat on the banks of the holy river and looked all around me at the chanting priests and the tolling bells and the hush falling like a mist all around, and the chants blending into silence.

India is so beautiful. Nevermind that auto-rickshaw driver in Ghazipur who had to stop every few minutes and blow into the opening at the side of the steering to breathe new life into the engine. Nevermind the repression of women I witnessed at the marriage in the village, whose name I've ignobly forgotten, inspite of it's being the second largest village in Asia, with a population of 75,000. Nevermind a million things. It's all there. We just need to shake our lazy selves from our stupor and go take a ramble across the country, and we just need to wonder that this place we are standing on, the people that we are today, we somehow bear resemblance to a sect of people who were awakening when civilization was asleep. Look at India today; so crowded, makes one wonder how long it will last. Perhaps not very long. But then we are all in this together: the europeans, the africans, the asians, the mohammedans, the parsis, the jews; and when one crumbles, it will take the rest along with it. It's a beautiful life, but there are six billion hearts in it, and also uncountably more that have lived and breathed in it, and all those that are to come. Yes, it's all one. And I know it will all go away.