Here and there

I missed the biggest barbie day of the year in Sydney without too much regret. Last year on Straya/Invasion Day I traversed the city twice on public transport. The buses and trains were for the most part full of bright-eyed youngsters keeping alive the great Australian tradition of getting tanked and affectionate in public places. They wore Aussie flags and Southern Crosses on their backs and green and gold stripes of zinc on their cheeks; peel-off flag tattoos from the Tele emblazoned many surfaces. The kids seemed to have been pulled from every shelf of the demographic pie shop and I wondered how they had come to accept and express so apparently uncritically the true blue lamington dogma. If the holiday was just a pretext for social interaction, why all the nationalist paraphernalia? Mostly though, I just wished they’d stop singing Waltzing Matilda. Things got a bit uglier later in the day: flags turned into drunken superhero capes; off-key singing turned into shouty aggro incoherence and corpses began to cover the pavements of the Cross. Waterside picnics con vino (chardonnay the tipple for special occasions like Australia Day) aside, I wasn’t devastated to pass it up this year.

The 26th January 2008 began far too early in the morning for me. I rose at 3.30am in order to catch a train from murky, menacing Gaya station. The train was late and I huddled in my blanket feeling very cold and cranky. Eventually the train shunted in and out with me aboard and I arrived in Varanasi, the most ancient city I’ve ever visited. Here in Shiva’s city, I discovered that the 26th January is also India’s Republic Day, this year celebrating the 58th anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of India. More people milled on the streets and ghats of Varanasi than in Sydney but the milling was a little more low-key.
Lots of sari-strolling, marigold wreaths, floating candles, paper flags (none worn as capes) and perhaps a bit more tooting and beeping on the streets.

As far as I know, Varanasi isn’t a dry city but I haven’t come across any booze vendors thus far; perhaps this is why I also didn’t happen upon any marauding clusters of Antipodeans thronging with nationalist fervour. Varanasi may be one of the few cities in the world not under sharia law where you can pass Australia Day under such conditions.