Skip to main content

Benaras - An Eternal Emotion

Benaras/Varanasi in India is not a place. It is an emotion, an eternity, an awe-evoking sentiment.


I didn't think I would be this captivated by this ancient town of narrow gullies, ghats and godmen. After all, jaded me had seen all that had to be seen on screen, depicted by maestros like Satyajit Ray. But I was mersmerized, and enchanted indeed.

Varanasi = Eternity
The 84 colourful, eclectic ghats stretching from Assi Ghat on one side to Varuna Ghat on the other, and the timeless, eternal Ganga flowing along. 

The kaleidoscopic sky - changing colour with the advent and the setting of the sun. 

The chirping and cackling of various birds, particularly mynahs and parakeets, sparrows and egrets.

The evening lighting up with twinkling lamps and lights around the ghats. 

The medley of colours, cultures, religions, dialects, races. 

The aroma of delicious kachoris and jalebis, and the ephemeral taste of the malaiyo or nimish.  

Just sitting on the ghats can be educative, enchanting, and unbelievably calming to the senses. 

Divinity and peace pervade the atmosphere.

Busy ghats in the morning
You watch people go by, some offering pujas, some clicking the awesome scenario, some interacting with locals, some observing the flow of the river, some enjoying a boat ride, and some sampling the chai at the roadside stalls. You watch the markets throb with sound and activity, colour and pagaentry.  

And the narrow lanes, replete with strolling cows, lapping dogs, mounds of cow dung and dried flowers, are so vibrant and throbbing with life. The steep, slippery ghat steps need real energy and agility to climb, though. Certainly not us car-hopping city slickers' cup of tea.

You can just be in Benaras, just flow with the passage of time. No need to fill your hours doing touristy things. Just sit on the ghat and watch, smell, taste, and feel the magical presence of something beyond the regular. Something that has existed from eternity, and will last probably till the end of time. Something that is so inclusive, so embracing and so warm that everyone feels at home here.

And quietly flows the river

Caution:

Don't go Benarasi saree shopping without proper research and verified sources, however! I learnt it the heard way. Fakes and machine-made stuff abound the markets, and an untrained eye can be easily duped by cunning salespeople. Even a saree enthusiast like me, who is more or less quite aware of handloom and power-loom differences, got tricked.

Lesson learnt: Come to Benaras/Varanasi only for altruism and soul calming. Commercial activities should be left aside!


The splendorous Ganga Aarati on Benaras ghats at sun-down



#Benaras #Varanasi #EternalIndia #IncredibleIndia #Benarastrip #Traveldiaries #VaranasiIndia #MokshinBenaras #PeaceinBenaras #SoulfulBenaras

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Does Mother Mary Really Come? You bet!

Prolific writer-activist-thinker Arundhati Roy's memoir, an ode to her mother's formidable personality, is cleverly titled, Mother Mary Comes to Me. Below the title is a picture of young Roy nonchalantly smoking a bidi. Irreverence, thy name is Arundhati Roy! At 372 pages, it is a tome, a sweeping saga that recollects both her mother's remarkable life, as well as her own. Is it a Memoir? Yes and no. Though the book title refers to their mother-daughter relationship, the book - at several junctures treats each one of them as independent and exclusive from one another. In fact, for a good part, her mother finds no mention at all, and the reader is engrossed reading about Roy's exploits and struggles through Architecture College, early attempts to find her vocation and calling, her dabbling with cinema, acting, scriptwriting; her romantic liaisons with the luscious JC, Sanjay, Pradeep et al. A life as extraordinary and unapologetic as Arundhati's mesmerizes in itself. ...
1 comment
Read more

The Sadness Within Us

A curious phenomenon has taken place over the years. Technology has advanced in leaps, modern medicine has become far more effective, we can control pain and disease far better, mental health is getting due attention, there are more avenues for creativity and entertainment.  Yet.... We are no longer able to be really happy. We are a chronically unhappy people. Forever dissatisfied, never content. Always thinking about the past or the future, never enjoying the moment. Think about it. When was the last time you were really, truly, wholly happy? Blissful, joyful? You slog hard at office, get that deserved raise/promotion, party hard to celebrate, and yet at the end of the day, a hollowness creeps in. An emptiness, a feeling of futility. You have a grand wedding - its the stuff Instagram dreams are made of. Your sweetheart looks like a million bucks with the latest designer lehenga, you yourself are spruced up, your family and friends are beaming, the event is going on swimmingly. Yet...
Post a Comment
Read more

Emotional toil of festival times

Festivals are happy times, right? Time for merriment, revelry, celebration, enjoying yourself... Wrong! Studies show festivals call for a steady spike in stress levels. Cortisol shoots up, starting with preparation for festivals, and remains high throughout, in the quest to do everything perfectly, "at least during the festival". Guess who bears the brunt of this? Yes, its the one who takes emotional labour for everyone she cares for - the woman of the house. She wants everything to be perfect, so works her ass off tidying and cleaning things. Then she wants her family to be fed well, so spends hours toiling away making delicacies in the kitchen. Rangoli to be painted - there she is with the brush. Festoons to be hung up - she's balancing herself on a stool. Furniture rearranged, flowers put up, puja room decorated? Yes, only one person who signs up for all this. Then there's the stress of the whole family at home, stepping on each other's toes. She has to appease...
2 comments
Read more