24~ Indian Anecdotes.

5 January

The Guesthouse was a humble house with only four rooms and a small street-facing restaurant that served good coffee. Most of the people living there were locals: the family who owned it, a street vendor selling momos—a typical Nepalese dish that looks like tiny empanadas—and an Argentinian studying Indian classical music and tabla, an Indian percussion instrument similar to a bongo.

An elderly man, about 80 years old, came up to the terrace to hang his clothes, smiling with his small eyes and his old-fashioned clothes.

"I love this city. That mist in the air gives it such a particular kind of magic..."

"The smog," Marco replied. "It’s not some kind of magic, it's just smog. Do you know how much smog there is in this city? 400 points," he answered himself. "Do you know what that means?"

"No," I answered, with total ease and ignorance.

"Air quality: 160 points," he declared with an air of superiority. "That means you get a notification on your phone that says ‘Warning, don’t leave your house.’ And I’m not even being sarcastic, it literally says that. There’s an app that tells you the smog levels in each place and the precautions you should take accordingly. Here, it says: ‘Do not go outside today, close your windows and stay indoors. Alert if you have lung diseases. Not suitable for outdoor sports or sensitive people.’ It’s real, look!" He brought his phone closer so I could see it for myself.

It was true—it really said that.

Evidently, I must not have hidden my look of astonishment very well. Wow... I was stunned. I had no idea there was an app that told you smog levels and gave you intelligent advice. To be honest, what surprised me most was the number of people who need to live with the precision of this data, who take the time to check it, and how far removed I am from all of that. Information, statistics, numbers. That’s when I realized—I live in my own bubble, where not even the smog reaches.

The severity of the smog was a fact I hadn’t been aware of. It surprised me, of course, but I think my mind had already normalized the fact that we were in a dangerous environment, so I had made it invisible—something irrelevant. By then, I had already accepted that being here came with its risks, and for the moment, my main concern was the monkeys and how to survive them. Smog was secondary.

The app, however, did surprise me. It planted a seed of curiosity—how many points would there be in Argentina? Or in Copenhagen, the city of healthy people, windmills, and bicycles? The inevitable human need for comparisons.

And, of course, here are the real numbers for the curious:

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Varanasi: Severe. It varies between 120 and 160 points according to IQAir indexes, fluctuating between the warnings “Harmful for sensitive groups,” “Generally harmful,” and “Wear a mask to go outside.”

The concentration of PM2.5 in Varanasi is currently 13.3 times higher than the WHO’s annual air quality guideline.

Yes, 13.3 times higher, you read that right. And there we were, sitting on the terrace, enjoying our toast with butter and smog, but now fully aware of it.

Buenos Aires: Good to moderate, varying between 32 and 60 points.

The concentration of PM2.5 in Buenos Aires’ air is 1.5 times higher than the annual guideline value.

"Well!… not too bad," I thought.

Copenhagen: Good, varying between 6 and 30 points.

The concentration of PM2.5 in Copenhagen’s air currently meets the WHO’s annual air quality guidelines.

And yeah… obviously.

Conclusions:

No Indian wears a mask, but they should. Argentinians aren’t doing as badly as we’d all assume. And Copenhagen remains the crystal bubble we all knew it was. The Danes continue to be almost perfect.

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Meanwhile, on the terrace in Varanasi...

"All the locals here say it's fog. Even the weather app says ‘Fog’..."

"What do you mean, fog?!" Marco exclaimed. "It’s not fog, damn it! So what, there's fog every week? Every single day? Besides, look up—do you see any fog? The sky is blue, not a single cloud. What we’re seeing here is pollution, atrocious pollution, but not fog. Come on, don’t mess with me, tía..."

As you can probably tell, Marco is from Spain. And of course, everything is much funnier when he tells it.

"But what do the people who live here say?" I asked, innocently, just to fuel his spectacular Andalusian monologue a little longer.

"That it's fog!" he answered, outraged. "Ever since I arrived, I've had this insane scratchiness in my throat, listen—" (he coughs) "can you hear it?"

"Yeah, I feel it too, since I got here… It was instant," Ilo replied.

Ilo has been living in Rishikesh for several years, a city in northern India, at the foothills of the Himalayas—pure air, clean river.

"It’s incredible how different the air feels, it’s true. Look!" (she coughs too).

"The soundtrack of this city is people spitting, didn’t you notice?" Ilo said, turning to me while I was still enchanted by the mystical glow of the sun. "Loud spitting, like vomit-level spitting. The kind that comes from deep inside the throat, the ones that hurt..."

She was right—you could hear it all over the city. We all laughed.

"Living here takes a year off your life, minimum. And I don’t even smoke! But imagine if you did… The death rate doubles, maybe even triples. That’s it, you’re definitely done for!"

"Well, you have to die of something, right? If you live here and you smoke on top of it, then yeah, you’re really screwed. But hey, at least you’re already here. Just a few steps from the sacred cremation site—your family doesn’t even have to move you. You’re not a burden to anyone... Almost a dignified death."

The laughter on that terrace, facing the Ganges with the sun on our faces, made the smog irrelevant. In my world, Varanasi remained just as magical and peaceful as its mystical golden light.

"But then, what are you doing here for two and a half months?" I asked the great Marco.

"I already know, I accept it, and I keep choosing it. I’d rather die a few years earlier but enjoy life. I like being here. I don’t know why, but I do..."

We set out to explore the Old City. Yes, an even older part within an already ancient city. A true labyrinth meant to get lost in. And that’s exactly what we did—we lost ourselves in its sidewalk-less streets, just narrow enough for only two people to walk side by side.

Crumbling houses, golden-age temples with immaculate windows facing the Ganges, and tiny shrines filled with incense smoke everywhere, as if they were relics.

Tiny houses barely a meter wide—both the facade and the entire home—tilted by time, their cracks revealing their age, with uneven walls and doors seemingly on the verge of collapse. But no… India, you will never truly understand it.

Each block held dozens of homes, impossible to delineate due to the zigzagging streets—the same streets they tore down to build a modern, extremely massive temple, designed in the style of Jerusalem, complete with expensive entrance fees and even an escalator to go pray. Paradoxically, that is what marks the entrance to the Old City.

Only one cow could pass through these streets at a time, and of course—for your own sake—you had to give it priority. One cow hit me in the abdomen with its horn as I passed by while it was eating.

I had no other option! There was no space, my friend! But in the jungle, it’s the law of the strongest, and in India, you quickly learn who was here first—and how nature reclaims the balance we’ve stolen from it.

I was scared. Really scared. It hurt—it wasn’t a joke. I felt death close by.

"This is dangerous," I told Ilo, as she laughed at my pale face.

"It’s nothing, just don’t walk so close next time."

"WHAT?! Look at these streets! Where else was I supposed to go?" I felt outraged.

That was the beginning of a new fear: large cows with horns, combined with India’s impossibly narrow streets. A fear that joined my already existing one—monkeys, in all their forms and spaces. Especially when I was drinking mate outdoors or carrying food in my backpack. No outdoor picnics here—unless you’re fully aware of your animal power. One way or another, Asia always invites you to connect.

"Ilo, this could have killed me! It could have tossed me in the air like a piece of paper!"

Ilo kept laughing, not taking the severity of the situation seriously.

Minutes later, a cow came charging toward us from one of the alleyways. I’ve never been to a bull run, but that’s exactly what it felt like. There was no space to escape into a shop or doorway, so I started moving desperately, trying to keep my cool—which I obviously did not have—until I found a small ledge to at least protect half of my body.

After a few chaotic seconds, I spotted a door with a slight indentation and pressed myself against the wall like a cartoon character. The cow passed.

I was starting to be more careful. And to take India’s potential dangers a little more seriously.

After walking for quite a while, we reached a main street of a more considerable size, and that’s where the infamous noise and chaos of Varanasi appeared… the symphony of hell.

Dozens of motorbikes honking simultaneously, carrying things you’d never imagine a bike could possibly transport. But here, reality defies the physical limits of probability. I saw a motorbike carrying six truck tires, three on each side of the driver, forming a kind of mobile abacus. I was left speechless. I still think they could rule the world if they wanted to...

Motorbikes converted into food stalls, more tuk-tuks, more honking, fruit vendors pushing their carts stacked with fresh produce. Vehicles, pedestrians, sadhus sitting by the roadside with their alms lunchboxes, cows, goats too—all of it together on a street with no sidewalks.

The noise was overwhelming. We moved at a snail’s pace, shoulder to shoulder with the locals, like a crowd inching forward in line for a concert, somehow trying to advance a few meters. And yet, in all that movement, I never felt unsafe.

Strangely enough, it was all becoming more and more natural to me. Instead of getting irritated, I found myself laughing.

Before coming to India, I felt numb, unshakable, dead. I begged to feel something. Here, I was delighted by the most outrageous sights at every corner. Impossible not to be surprised. Impossible not to feel alive.

Bored? Need some action? Come to India! It’ll pass in no time.

Just like in the rest of Asia, life here seems to unfold entirely outside, on the streets. I love it. It’s like a theater play—but real life and in the open air.

Scenes, people, conversations, movement, stories… Human connection and communication.

There was always something happening, no matter where you looked.

And yet, despite the crowds, despite the potential dangers at every step—as always, nothing ever actually happened.

"Is it safe here?" – I asked an Indian friend in a garage while storing my belongings in the trunk of his car. He laughed.

"Nothing is safe here, but nothing happens. This is India…"

I felt calm, as if walking on cotton, as if untouchable. Everything was complete chaos, but paradoxically, walking in the middle of it felt peaceful. As if the body quickly found a natural flow of survival.I can’t find much explanation, maybe they are just sensations.

Could it be that seeing so much disorder “outside” is less disruptive to my mental chaos?

Nothing surprised me, as if my soul had been there before. Like a kind of strange normality.

Without a doubt, Varanasi was the most incredible place I visited in my entire life – and after living in Asia for two years, it still is.

—Look… do a test— Ilo told me — scream! — We both stood firmly in the middle of the street and screamed as loudly as we could, with all the air in our lungs:

— AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH… !!!!

No one got alarmed. No one, absolutely no one, even turned around.The sound of the streets of India drowned out everything. We laughed.

The strange and real dangers quickly become as natural as looking both ways before crossing the street: Monkeys that threaten your belongings and mock the human condition. Cows that don’t control the size of their bodies. Bulls roaming freely like stray dogs. Crazy goats blocking entrances and headbutting anyone who dares to face them. Tigers and bears that go out for a stroll at night. Rats walking along the walls of restaurants. All of that becomes a real possibility and a “precaution.”

No one warns you about the seriousness of these things. Everyone smiles at the little monkeys and takes pictures while trying to feed them a banana… Ancestors of evil.

— Well, yes, cows hurt people from time to time. — Ilo confessed.

— Didn’t you think that was a more important fact than the smog index, my friend?