Varanasi/Benares/Kashi: City of Light, City of Temples

Varanasi, the city known as Benares during the British Raj, and referred to as Kashi by many locals, is one of the oldest cities in the world, and probably the oldest city in India. It holds significance for Buddhists and Jains, but is definitely the most important Hindu city in the world. The city is made up of clusters of stucco buildings seemingly dropped haphazardly amidst winding alleys and streets crowded with shrines, cows and heaps of garbage. But where the balcony of gutters and rooftops that serve as playgrounds for monkeys open up, the marvelous Ganges and stone ghats provide evidence of something holy at work. Across the river a white sandy plain faces the city, offering up a door to the space the buzzing city desperately needs.

In the evening the ghats that are vacated during the oppressively hot day cloud with boys playing cricket, orange-robed sadhus seeking donations and pilgrim bathers, both human and bovine. All taking advantage of the relatively cool evening air and preparing for the evening arati, the Ganga Puja, which the city is famous for. The riverfront and our airy, balconied room in Vishnu Rest House (painted blue, of course) evoke a villa on the Riviera.

From our room you can hear the slapping of clothes on the Dhobi Ghat. In the distance a prayer call blasts through a fuzzy loudspeaker. From the river, from the boat slowly rowed upstream, the colors from the ghats bleed into the dark green water. The sarees, scarves, orange blossoms, candles, even the incense seep into the stench and cover the reality of the sacrifices. Groups of pilgrims with shaved heads and bare feet tramp from ghat  to shrine to ghat bathing, praying, chanting, finally visiting the burning ghat to pay last respects to the body that brought them here. In the early morning hours small wooden row boats cross to the empty desert facing the city. Other boats row languidly up and down the bank, making way for funeral processions, swimmers and fish that flick their tails at foreign passengers.

You feel like you are being led somewhere that you didn't ask to go, or that you did ask but had no preparation for. You are surrounded by those who know, or maybe their faith is so strong they have convinced you they do. The shit, trash and screaming hawkers do not bother them like they bother you. Perhaps they know that these are trials you must endure to end at that stillness we have all come here seeking. Perhaps they wear no shoes so as to be closer to the suffering, for if they suffer more now, if they die more here, they will rise higher there, where their feet touch only clouds and rose petals. Perhaps that is why they stand before shrines built into corners of shit-strewn alleys and touch the feet of Lord Ganesh. Perhaps that is why, when they think they see God, they lead their family to the river to drink. Perhaps I see the same thing, but offer my devotion like a blind, mute servant sitting with closed eyes to better absorb that aroma of conviction in the wind.