My first impressions were mind expanding,
filled with crushing throngs of busy people
all moving, their clamor and noise unrelenting.
The enduring, evocative scents and smells of
a culture thousands of years old and thriving.

The wide mud brown life's blood Ganges
River flowing through the heart of the city,
filled with wooden crafts of all descriptions,
people on the banks bathing, washing clothes,
living, open funeral pyres burning, life and
death laid bare for all eyes to see as it has been
since Time Immemorial.

On the street's flowers and music in abundance,
women in colorful, to drab Sari dresses denoting
their stature, along with some men in western attire
but most in sarongs and open toed sandals. While
walking the streets every few blocks the at first
shocking sight of impoverished recently deceased
bodies laid out on the sidewalks upon straw mats,
swaddled in cloth wrappings awaiting donation
offerings enough to pay for their funeral fires.

Unaccustomed to seeing Westerners the people pause
and stare as if we were from outer space visitors, if we
stopped moving, unthreateningly and wide eyed they
would surround us, perhaps unsure what they are seeing.

A mutually curious encounter, Humanity visited up
close and personal. Aw yes, I fondly remember India.