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Crossing the River Ganges:
July 8, 2005
Vishnu's feet were sweating, leaking into the great Indian river where cleansed souls would bathe. And as the stench rose, the people ended floating face down and dead in the river of mother.
The odor of god feet enflamed and lowered the noses and eyes of everyone along the river, Kshatriya and Untouchable and the children without caste.
Travel along the Ganges stopped when child after child after father was found face down in the sweat of Holy Vishnu. Bodies were thick enough to dam many sections of the river, and families prepared to flee the stench of decay among sanctimonious waters.
On the day of proposed abandonment, the winds stopped. The trees along the banks rippled, and an endless slip of white bengal tigers poured out along the river banks, staring over the drainage of sweat and flesh, licking their whiskers and paws.
Each tiger slowly moving, each crossing Ganga one by one on the backs of the sturdy and the dead and the cleansed, as the gods stared down and over, smiling into a story absolved of time.
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