last day in banaras

saying hello to people is a long, arduous process. just popping your head into somebody's shop/home/etc. usually turns into a few cups of chai and an hour-long chat.

it's nothing, however, compared to saying goodbye.

saying goodbye takes at least twice as long, and involves not only chai, but entire meals. over the last couple of days, i've had people buy or cook for me breakfast, lunch, and dinner. and it's only going to continue right up until i leave sarnath. it's not necessarily a bad thing, though.

last night tsetop and namgyal, two friends of mine and jojo's, took us out for dinner at rangoli garden - the fancy restaurant in sarnath. the evening started out pleasant, but eventually turned into a long, involved discussion about feminism, in which tsetop gave biological explanations for the reason why women can never be as good as men. (he's a medical student... it involved arguments about blood flow to the brain and menstruation... i'm still not entirely sure about his arguments.)

over the next two days, jojo and i have multiple meals scheduled with all of our sarnath friends. today we made one last trip into varanasi to say goodbye to all of our city friends and buy some last-minute banaras souvenirs.

it hasn't hit me yet that i'm not going to be back here again for a while...