Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald

many people, crowding down the steps to the river in their colored clothes and colored shoes, jammed together under the tilted wicker umbrellas to talk and deal and pray, people in the river itself, waist-deep in the water, holding up handfuls of the water, and the water glittering as it fell through their fingers, praying, washing—washing themselves, washing their clothes, washing their children and their sins. Then the boats: the big hydrofoil seeking its way to dock through the little darting rowboats, the pilgrim boats making the crossing from Ramnagar, rowers standing on their sterns pushing at their oars, the tourist boats with their canopies, the kids in inflated tractor tires paddling around scavenging for river-scraps, down to the bobbing saucers of butter-light woven from mango leaves that the people set adrift on the flow. Vision by vision the Ganga revealed itself to Kyle; next he became aware of the buildings: the guesthouses and hotels and havelis shouldering up to the steps, the ridiculous pink water towers, the many domes of the mosque and the golden spires of the temples, and a little temple down at the river leaning into the silt; the arcades and jetties and galleries and across the river, beyond the yellow sand and the black, ragged tents of the holy men, the chimneys and tanks and pipes of the chemical and oil plants, all flying the green, white, and orange wheel-banners of Bharat.
         "Oh," Kyle said. "Oh man." And: "Cool."
         Salim was already halfway down the steps.
         "Come on."
         "Is it all right? Am I allowed?"
         "Everyone is allowed. Come on, let's get a boat."
         A boat. People didn't do things like that, but here they were, settling onto the seat as the boatman pushed out, a kid not that much older than Kyle himself with teeth that would never be allowed inside Cantonment, yet Kyle felt jealous of him, with his boat and his river and the people all around and a life without laws or needs or duties. He sculled them through floating butter-candles—diyas, Salim explained to Kyle—past the ghat of the sad-dhus, all bare-ass naked and skinny as famine, and the ghat where people beat their clothes against rock washing-platforms, and the ghat where the pilgrims landed, pushing each other into the water in their eagerness to touch the holy ground of Varanasi, and the ghat of the buffaloes— Where where? Kyle asked and Salim pointed out their nostrils and black, back-curved horns just sticking up out of the water. Kyle trailed his hand in the water, and when he pulled it out it was covered in golden flower petals. He lay back on the seat and watched the marble steps flow past, and beyond them the crumbling, mold-stained waterfront buildings, and beyond them the tops of the highest towers of New Varanasi, and beyond them the yellow clouds, and he knew that even when he was a very old man, maybe forty or even more, he would always remember this day and the color of this light and the sound of the water against the hull.
         "You got to see this!" Salim shouted. The boat was heading in to shore now through the tourists and the souvenir-boats and a slick of floating flower garlands. Fires burned on the steps, the marble was blackened with trodden ashes, half-burned wood lapped at the water's edge. There were other things among the coals: burned bones. Men stood thigh-deep in the water, panning it with wide wicker baskets.
         "They're Doms, they run the burning ghats. They're actually untouchable but they're very rich and powerful because they're the only ones who can handle the funerals," said Salim. "They're sifting the ashes for gold."
         The burning ghats. The dead place. These fires, these piles of wood and ash, were dead people, Kyle thought. This water beneath the boat was full of dead people. A funeral procession descended the steps to the river. The bearers pushed the stretcher out into the water; a man with a red cord around