http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Blair/banaras-real-and-coincidental.html
Opportunity Knocks
best let it in, dat b*tch be crazy.
Banaras Real and Coincidental
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As I was standing and watching, I started speaking with an Indian boy there about the ritual and accompanying beliefs. After a while, he invites me to his family’s silk factory. I don’t intend on buying any sarees until the end of my trip, and I tell him as much, but Varanasi is famous for its silk, so I agree to go with him. Tourists here get these sort of invitations dozens of times a day, and for the most part I ignore the people and just keep walking, but for whatever reason, I was that day in the mood to go see a silk shop. When I get there, I’m given tea and meet the man who owns it. No sooner has he found out I’m from New York than he asks me if I know Manhattan College. Why yes, quite well. How strange. I assume he’s mistaking it for NYU, and just throwing some names out there, but then he tells me he knows a professor there. “Stephen?” he says, but I don’t understand his accent until he says he’s a professor of Religion, and then I realize I know exactly who he’s talking about, quite well. The odds of this happening in a country this size, in a city this size, are so small it’s mind boggling. I promise to come back and buy my sarees from him on my way out of town in April.
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Maybe a Jasper at the other end of this blog?
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