Banaras
A city older than time itself
To wake up in a city that is literally probably the oldest inhabited city on the planet, is well , really surreal.
“Varanasi is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together”, Mark Twain immortalized the city and these words as he described one of the most vibrant, and one of the most struggling cities of the modern world , as it constantly struggles to fight age old traditions and customs with mobile phones and jeans , even when it is reluctant to fight it, as it still enjoys the warm embrace of traditions and culture, warmed by over a thousand years of tending to both the joys and sadness, to the failures and achievements of both human endeavor and natural wonders.
The earliest known archaeological evidence suggests that settlement around Varanasi in the Ganga valley began in the 11th or 12th century BC, placing it among the world’s oldest continually inhabited cities. Hiuen Tsiang ( Xuanzang) who visited Varanasi in the 7th century named it “Polonisse” and wrote that the city had some 30 temples with about 30 monks.Now it has more than 25,000 temples. It is said that Shiva had formed this city, in one verse of the Rig Veda he says, “The three worlds form one city of mine, and Kashi is my royal palace therein.” To walk on those ghats, to walk through those streets, which are that old really does something to you. One of the main reasons i like history is because of that feeling you get when you come in contact with living examples of history. When you enter the Kanadriya Mahadeo temple in Khajuraho, you know that some hundred priests and some hundred thousand builders(workers, engineers, labors, whatever you want to call them), built this temple over a thousand years ago with their blood and sweat, and you are also touching those stones and you are also walking on those stone plinths, built by those craftsmen whose genius the engineers of today can only dream of achieving.
This city is different, no doubt, different than any other city in India. This city represents that age old conflict and absolute surreal calmness which sweeps over you when you are at the ghats of Varanasi. But still, this city has malls like every other Indian city, this city has 4G plans even when those plans are being sold by the son of a priest at the Kashi Vishwanath temple. This weird conflict is ravishing as it mimics the rest of the world. Here the Chai of banaras gets a modern update for people who want it to be sugar free. The paan is somehow lost to the new wave of insurgents arriving in the form of mints, but cold drinks seem to have carved a small little niche of itself nestled comfortably between the lassi and rabdi. But the coke (the one you drink ) never seems to outshine the gulab jamun or the rabdi, it kind of just fits. There was an initial struggle as evidenced by the fridge that was bought to store the coke, but still it just fit.
Varanasi is the living embodiment of Hindu philosophies. The city gulped and kind of barfed any new advances made in the domain and name of modernity and made modernity stick to the customs it was so familiar with, just like Hinduism, over time, engulfed Buddhism and Jainism, not in a violent way , but in a kind and charming way where you will be left with multiple options, but still will be too broken down to conform to any single idea. Varanasi can do that to you sometimes. The chai adjusts to make itself sugar free, the gulab jamun adjusts itself to become diabetes friendly, yet somehow the cows and the scooters and the bikes and the humans and the Mahindra Xylos and the BMW 320Ds still find a way to exist together. The bare footed devotees and the cows along with the incessantly honking scooters and also the weed smoking foreigners somehow find a way to work together, to work together for the common goal and the common good, notwithstanding any problems they face along the way.
The Ganga aarati is something that should definitely be enjoyed from the river, as the aarati is for Ganga, hence it will be best experienced if you enjoy the 45 minute spectacle from the river itself. The chants, “Har Har Mahadev Shambhu, Kashi Vishwanath Gange”, has a haunting effect on your internal and middle ear, as your body sways in Ecstasy as it simultaneously enjoys the rhythmic beats that plays on on the JBL speakers. This is exactly what is unique about this city. The JBL speakers do not take away anything from the divinity of the priests involved in the puja. Kolkata experiences this during the Durga puja, when all the achievements of modernity is used in conjunction with the customs of the past, but this city experiences this everyday at 6 PM in the evening as the Dashashwamedh ghat lights up like the rest of India on Diwali, and all the participants are transported to a new time and place, without a TARDIS, and is brought back again to reality 45 mins later with the slowing chants of the elusive mantra.
Varanasi extends between the rivers, Varuna and Assi , hence it is named Varanasi, yet somehow it seems to extend well beyond that and venture deep into the rest of India and then to the world. In 1656, emperor Aurangzeb ordered the destruction of many temples and the building of mosques, causing the city to experience a temporary setback. But this did not deter the spirit of this city, the destruction of the Vishwanath temple did not deter the spirit of the city. This is why this city represents, so boldly, the ideas and philosophies of Hinduism, as it endures and endures , but at the end the aggressor always loses because he was wrong, and the city like the religion itself finds its footing back again.
To quote Diana L. Eck( a scholar of religious studies who is Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University), “The city illumines truth and reveals reality. It does not bring new wonders into the scope of vision, but enables one to see what is already there. Where this eternal light intersects the earth, it is known as Kashi (Varanasi)”.
