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not ordinarily strong enough to support weight, hold up, as if by magic, varieties of humans like a bicycle tire without rim or tube holding up three children standing on each other's shoulders. The bit being concealed pipes and wires to accomplish the impossible juggling act. Hundreds of costumed children in groups of three and four or more, on individual floats, hang suspended from hidden pipes and steel wires dangling over the crowd like so many hanged men. The parade lasts for about five hours moving at small speed because of the dense rush of people pushing from both sides. The whole melee being a vast, loud, exhausting, mauling jumble - I could take only as much of the rush and left at 1:30. My nerves spent, longing for a quiet dark street with no people. Indians in a crowd, act like penned in animals about to be slaughtered, milling around without direction or mind, rude caucus. The thin shell of their humanity crushed to powder underfoot.

Oct 19, 70

image - a teashop, opening in the wall, 6 x 6 feet in back of the coal stove where the tea is prepared. Three wooden benches, a wooden table. Some people sit on the benches, clay cups on the table in hands, drinking, moans and muffled cries come from under the table where a small boy of around 8 lies sobbing, sprawled among the legs of the furniture and the feet of the customers. The men continue drinking their tea in silence but not in quiet. The child under darkness of the table. His whining cries seeming to emanate from the wooden furniture.

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Ramesh says it is only since the hippies have come to Benares that Indians have started to abuse foreigners. That the hippies outraged the mores of the conservative society here, and were considered permissible targets for public abuse and this has carried over now to any young foreigner who walks the streets.

The National Geographic has sent a writer to do the text for an article on the Ganges also an article on Hinduism for a book on Religions they are doing. As usual, they have sent a staff man with no prior knowledge of India or of Hinduism. The man, nice enough, conservative, bland, can at last only produce the most superficial of text.

5:00 AM morning I sit waiting for a friend in the gullies. A Sadhu I know comes by "Good morning." "Good morning." "Kashi is heaven," "Yes, Kashi is very good," "America is paradise but Kashi is heaven."

Benares at its most holy state in the early morning.

"But a still more important consideration is that the chief part of the organization of every living creature is due to inheritance; and consequently, though each being assuredly is well fitted for its place in nature many structures have now no very close and direct relations to present habits of life." Darwin - Origin of Species

More than once I have gone to my assistants home because he is tardy. Invariable he is asleep, usually with one of his boy friends. Having stayed out late the night before. Three times in the last week with three different friends. It is