It wasn’t only the smell, an odour so deeply foul, of mixed faeces, urine, sweat and rotten foods, with occasional scents of fried delicacies, masala tea and burning doob. The chaos was absolute; the constant honking of edgy tuk-tuk, car and rickshaw drivers, migraine-inducing in seconds; the sight of congestion, a totalitarian attack on the very obsolete idea of personal space.

Falling electrical cables, climbing primates, immobile cows and tick-infected dogs spread on their putrefied ground mattress in near coma. The walk had been a brisk one, from the white and yellow façade of Saint Thomas Church, through busy crossings, below commercial billboards of yogi masters in contortionist asanas, and to the river bank.

How can a city promising a cleanse of the soul leave such a dirty envelope, an encounter of filth barely imaginable? At dark, these alleys were the bowels of an escapeless labyrinth, the Ganga a syrupy Styx, its nervous flow more likely to crush souls than wash sins away.

Before sunrise, warm mist covered the city with a misleading timid robe. The sky was still indigo blue; the heat, while not as pregnant as the previous evening, brought its impalpable heaviness, which made the body sink a little. Monsoon rains upstream had caused the water levels to increase dramatically over the previous days. Local authorities had forbidden all boats from venturing out, offering a rare opportunity of stillness, allowing a timeless nature to express its wilderness undisturbed by tourist boats.

• Tags: Farah Abdessamad, India, Issue 18