Varanasi: an Impression
I had been warned about Varanasi. “It’s incredibly dirty,” they said. “Full of filth and squalor! Don’t go there!” “I don’t know why you want to go there,” said another. “You’ll get loads of hassle.” “There is no spirituality there, only cheats.”
Of course, none of them had ever been to Varanasi, Benares, the holy city on the banks of the great Ganga. And the blacker a place is painted, the more you appreciate its true colours once you arrive. So we went anyway.
At five in the evening, as the dusk draws in and the light over the river fades to a beige shadow, the bells of the temple at the summit of Kedarghat begin to toll.
Painted somewhat incongruously in a pink-and-white candy stripe scheme and adorned with figurines of the gods, like the others Kedar ghat is in reality a series of steps that lead down the bank into the river itself. And all human life is here. In the river Ganges, people bathe, lathering themselves with packet soap. There are scrawny youngsters, leaping and diving; there are portly businessmen who shuffle around sedately, trying to hide their bellies; and there are the holy men, their movements crafted and deliberate.
Every ghat has its own character, its own life. Some are well built – others are not. One ghat is populated by a herd of water buffalo and women assemble mosaics of dried patties to use as fuel and building material. The Ram Singh ghat is overgrown and ruled over by squawking green parakeets.
Behind them extends a maze of alleyways, the stereotype of a mediaeval city. The houses are decorated if decrepit and among the filth at street level patrols a pair of vigilant mongooses, not to mention the stray dogs and the occasional water buffalo.
On the waters, the twinkle of candlelights borne in flimsy paper coracles shimmer against the surface as the boats row steadily upstream. Still the boys of the ghat bat their cricket balls oblivious to the sound of the bells and their kites flit about the sky like bats enjoying the cool evening air.
We doff our shoes – there is nowhere to place them but upon the marble memorial stones at the temple’s entrance – and led by our guide, a boy called Manoj we met selling postcards of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, we step inside.
We are greeted by a cacophony of bells and drums as the devout observe their duties; bathing the effigies of the sacred cow and the lingam that symbolises Shiva and murmuring their prayers at a series of both the shrines and alcoves set into the heavily inscribed walls and at the huge idols that dominate the interior.
The floor is wet on the soles of our bare feet, water seeping up from the Ganges itself, perhaps. It is a world of its own, sealed off by the drama of the clanging bells which reverberate into your mind, your body, your soul.
Outside, another puja is beginning on the steps just off the river’s edge. Accompanied by Manoj and other boys on the tabard and gongs, the Brahmin wafts the incense and commences the rituals of the flaming lamps, his face a mask of rapt concentration.
He concludes by casting petals into the river below, while to the south the candles have clumped together into a flotilla of flickering lights and the last body of the day burns out its pyre.
How do I feel, an Anglo-Indian here in India for the first time as an adult, here in Varanasi where I have never been before? I don’t know. I am not a Hindu, nor even really an Indian, yet somehow this is still a part of the complex make-up of my being. I don’t know.
In the distance, the silhouettes of the hawkers and donkeys fade into the evening haze and the broad slow ebb of the Ganges lingers on.
