Being in Benares

What can I write about Benares that has not been written before, in words or in photographs. But why do I have to say anything that has not been said. 

I want to relive the same city of dim alleys and corridors, of blazing lamps and resounding chants. Of quiet midnights by the river. Sometimes, it is satisfying to be able to write about the sameness, the changelessness of things. 

"Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together”

~~ Benares was the third in the bucket list of three places Baba and Ma had wanted to visit together. Belur, Barisal, and Benares. Earlier trips were cancelled due to other priorities. I had to plan this one with them and the girls this summer even when it was not the best of travel weathers. Time could be running out. Does one ever know.

~~ My first walk in the city was on a festive April afternoon. Narrow crowded roadsides decorated for Ramzan. Winding lanes, like secret corridors, leading to the quiet ghat at one end, and to the un-quiet main square and temple at the other. 

Bright-coloured ladies in hijabs chattering on their way to the mosque through the heady aroma of kebabs in one street, and in the next, busy temple devotees with baskets of flowers and sweets surrounded by the scent of incense. The city has a strange home-grown harmony. Perhaps sourcing from, or flowing back to its river.

~~ The ghats, gullies and steps of Kashi leading one everywhere and nowhere feel almost storylike. Most of the doors and windows of houses in the old city are vibrantly painted. Shades of blue, yellow, orange. Walls, pillars, staircases, alleys are all a natural canvas to endless street art. Faces of Shiv and Kali and Brahma, figures of elephants and cows and kings, the sun and the moon and also some abstract graffiti. A strange looking city, and warmly so.

~~ We watched the evening aarti at Dashashwamedh ghat. From the shore, also from a boat on the river. 

Starting after sundown, this was an hour long spectacle of lights, chants, colours leading to a sensuous exaltation. Conch shells and loud vedic hymns and fuming incense bundles and saffron drapes and saffron sheets and heaps of marigold petals and prayer bells and layered lamps. Seven priests in saffron silk at seven altars performing elaborate dance-like rituals with perfect postures and choreographed movements in unbroken synchronisation all the way to a breathtaking crescendo. 

After the ceremony ended, the crowds dissolved, my girls floated two little leaf lamps with their wishes and prayers, in the Ganges. There were myriads of cups rafting and rocking and flickering, like stars in night sky. For as long as I looked, I could see their lamps alight and floating on to somewhere. 

                                                                                    

~~ On our boat ride back late evening, when it suddenly fell silent after all the chanting had stopped, we passed by a ghat that was ablaze with fire and smouldering smoke made motifs against the dark sky. 

There were wailings that faded out as we passed closer and then farther away from Manikarnika, the cremation ghat. Where the fire never goes out and a pyre is always burning. An ending here is believed to liberate a soul from samsara towards the path of moksh, the boatman said. It was a silent, surreal sort of moment and then, we looked away.

~~ Sunrise feels closer to us on a river than at the sea. A river has no waves, just ripples. Has shore-to-shore expanse but is still familiar, finite. Is deep but not bottomless, We watched the sunrise every dawn at Benares. Every dawn, I remembered my seeking and finding of the unchanging. I was happy.

~~ Finally, the boats of Benares. Dawn boats, Midnight boats. Fleet of busy boats. A solitary waiting boat. Far travelling boats. Anchored boats. Boats evoke passage,  promise, a journey - could be first or final. Maybe the Crossing. 

"Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;"