“What’s your name again?” I asked the man who, with a tilak on his forehead, looked more like a pundit than a taxi driver. I was not sure if I got the name right the first time he said it.
“Kashinath,” he repeated, smiling.
I could not help but smile internally myself. Kashinath (one of several names of Lord Shiva) had come to ferry me to the hotel on my first visit to Kashi, as Varanasi was known in ancient times!
Shaking my head at the silly comparison, my mind returned to it after a while as Kashinath’s Maruti Ertiga negotiated the roads smoothly: Doesn’t God have an abode in each and every sentient being?
After freshening up at the hotel and resting for a while, I set out to accomplish things that topped my agenda: Visit the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, watch Ganga Arati, go to the Sankat Mochan Hanuman Temple.
From the hotel it was about four kilometers to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, so I took an Uber. But I had to get down at one end of the corridor that led to the temple, about half a mile away. I soon found out that most vehicular traffic was banned near that area to avoid (further) overcrowding.
In any case, I was happy to walk the rest of the way. The crowd seemed to swell more than usual—even though I couldn’t be sure what the ‘usual’ was. It was my first trip here, after all. I noticed the presence of Kanwariyas everywhere, which must have added to the rush, I thought.
It was Shravan Maas, when Shiva devotees known as Kanwariyas bring the holy waters of Ganga from various shrines as an offering to the Shiva temples of their localities. The period typically starts sometime in July according to the Hindu lunar calendar and marks the rainy season that’s traditionally taken to be four months long. The Kanwariyas derive their name from the bamboo pole called kanwar that is slung across their shoulders; on each end is tied a water pot for the holy water. It is said that the pots should not touch the ground throughout their arduous journey. Usually undertaken barefoot, the yatra often spans hundreds of kilometers.
Besides the devout Kanwariyas, I saw pilgrims from all over India throng the road to the Vishwanath temple, with shops doing brisk business along the way. From chilled lassi (curd shake) to garlands and incense sticks, from Banarasi sarees to knick-knacks, and from miniature god icons to lockers for rent, the things on offer were as varied as the people who bought them.
I found the huge temple gate, clearly a new addition to the temple precincts, to be locked. A couple of sentries stood guard nearby. Then I noticed a serpentine queue of several hundred meters, which was snaking its way into the temple through a narrow side entry. When I asked one of the guards whether they ever opened the new gate, he curtly answered, “Only when Modiji comes.”
Modiji was certainly not coming that evening.
I debated in my mind whether to join the queue but then thought otherwise, for I might miss the Ganga Arati by the time my turn came. Deciding to come back the next morning, I thought of visiting the Sankat Mochan Temple instead. The arati was supposed to begin around seven and I could come back by then, I calculated.
I took a Rapido bike to the Sankat Mochan Temple and reached there within minutes. From now on, these bikes zipping through the narrow lanes of Varanasi would be my preferred way of getting around, I decided.
Both these epics are highly revered by Hindus and non-Hindus alike but Ramcharitmanas, being more accessible of the two through its simpler language, has been more popular with the masses. I haven’t read the whole poem, but one of its key portions is Sunderkand and I have found its recital (especially by Ajay Yagnik ji and Pandit Prem Prakash Dubey) to be a truly blissful and uplifting experience.
What’s more, since we are on the subject of Varanasi, the city of Lord Shiva, it is said that Ramcharitmanas is portrayed by Tulsidas as being narrated by Shiva to his consort, Parvati. One of the lines from the poem reads: “Uma kahau main anubhav apna; sat hari bhajan jagat sab sapna.” (“Let me share my own experience, Uma: chanting Lord Rama’s name is the truth; the rest of the world is a dream.” Uma is another name of Parvati and ‘hari’ here refers to Lord Rama.)
Suspended beautifully between a dream-like visit to Sankat Mochan and the reality of my need to hasten to my next stop, I hired another bike to reach Dasashwamedh Ghat to watch the famous Ganga Arati. The ghat is a few minutes’ walk from Kashi Vishvanath. I wasn’t late, as the arati was yet to be started. But I wasn’t early enough to secure a standing space close to the venue. A road led from the Godowlia Chowk down toward the ghat where priests performed the arati—and it was chock-full of people. I edged past the throng to a place as close to the priests as I could and stood still when I realized I could go no further without trampling on someone.
The arati began soon with the chanting of sacred mantras by the priests. After a while, they lit up the diyas of the huge arati lamps that are mostly associated with Ganga Arati performed at various holy sites in India but which also make an appearance at several temple aratis as well. It was indeed a majestic spectacle, with the priests moving the lamps in a graceful, slow circular motion, while singing the hymns to various gods, including Ma Ganga. The accompanying clanging of bells and sounding of conch shells magnified the impact. For a full half an hour or so, people stood spellbound, bowing their heads or folding their hands in prayer. Some ‘reel addicts’ couldn’t resist capturing the action on their mobiles. I hesitated, then quickly clicked a few pictures before shoving my phone back into the pocket and continuing to listen to the chants without further interruption.
When the arati ended, the throng dispersed abruptly and people rushed toward Godowlia Chowk in order to go back to their hotels or just gorge on street food at any of the umpteen stalls tended to by the local folks who were looking expectantly at the returning crowd. It was pretty chaotic but there was a strange rhythm to the whole thing. I could imagine the same scene playing out each day ever since the arati became a grand choreographed ritual sometime in the 1990s. Before that, Ganga Arati was said to be performed in a rather simple manner; there was no ‘organized show’ as such except maybe on a few special occasions.
Going back to my own hotel on a Rapido bike, I realized something was not quite right. Something that didn’t really gel with the serene arati spectacle I had just witnessed, that seemed to be totally out-of-place for a holy city. What was it that kept bothering me as the biker moved swiftly along the streets?
“Beep! Beep, beep, beep!!”
It was the persistent, almost non-stop honking by the bikers and other motorists on the roads. And the moment it registered in my mind, it stayed put, becoming a nasty fixture in my otherwise-calm brain. My brain turned, to tweak a phrase Mumbaikars use for a goat-brain delicacy, into ‘fried bheja.’ Only when I reached the hotel and shut the door of my room did the obnoxious blare subside a little (though I would be subjected to the same assault on the auditory senses the day after and on my next visit a year later.)
Next morning, I joined the queue of devotees waiting to enter the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. Fortunately, it wasn’t half as long as yesterday and I was able to get in within 30 minutes. The ‘Modi gate’ outside (which remained locked) was as imposing as the man’s ego and seemed out of proportion to the relatively smaller size of the actual temple. It also didn’t fit in with the architectural integrity of the whole temple compound, I thought, as I moved along toward the sanctum sanctorum.
The main deity of the temple, Vishwanath, which means Lord of the Universe, is a Shiva Linga housed in a silver-covered square altar. It is believed to be one of the 12 Jyotirlingas—phallic stone emblems of Lord Shiva that appeared spontaneously on their own (called Swayambhu) at 12 different places across India. (Jyoti means light and Jyotirlingas are also visualized as pillars of light extending to infinity at both the ends; there’s an interesting legend from the Shiva Purana about how Shiva humbled the egos of Brahma and Vishnu by manifesting himself as an infinite pillar of light.)
As my turn for the darshan came, I bowed my head at the altar but before the attending priest could put a mark of blessing on my forehead—which he quickly did for each person in the moving line—I was shoved from behind and missed it. I’m not too much into rituals, but somehow I felt a little bad for being given the miss at such an important occasion. Nevertheless, I harbored no ill will and quietly sat in the adjoining open courtyard where people were allowed to linger and say their prayers. I sat cross-legged, aligning my back with one of the yard’s pillars. Instinctively, I closed my eyes and meditated for a while.
I opened my eyes when I felt something soft, gentle and moist touch my forehead. A small boy of about six or seven was standing before me, smiling. One of his fingers was wet with vermillion and it was with this finger that he had put a sacred dot on my face, just between the eyebrows.
I smiled back at him, thanking him and quietly pressing a tenner in his hand. I watched him go and sat there a little longer, musing about the sweet little episode and how serendipitous it seemed. Count your blessings, no matter how they come.
There was one more place in Varanasi I really wanted to visit but couldn’t go, and I promised myself to see it the next time I came to the city.
After a little more than a year, I went again and visited this place that’s as important to Varanasi, if not more, as the Vishwanath Temple: Manikarnika Ghat.
Varanasi is the place in India where most people, especially old ones, wish they could die. In fact, there are a number of old age homes in the city that offer accommodation and care to those who wish to live their final days here—so they could die, get cremated, and attain moksha, which means freedom from the cycle of births and deaths. For this reason, many of these care centers have ‘Moksha’ or ‘Mukti’ added to their names.
The belief emerges from certain popular legends. One, according to Skanda Purana, says that Kashi (how Varanasi is called in the scripture) sits atop Lord Shiva’s trident and is therefore not bound by the laws of multiple births applicable elsewhere on Earth. The special, sacred status of the city gives it the power to set people free from the cycle of rebirths and, instead, allow them to merge their souls with the Divine Soul when they die.
Another legend finds mention in scriptures such as Shiva Purana and Rama Tapaniya Upanishad. It says that when someone takes their last breath in Kashi, Lord Shiva whispers the Taraka Mantra (the mantra of liberation, which is said to be the name of Lord Rama or the primordial sound Om) into their right ear, thus granting them moksha.
Whatever be the legend, one thing seems sure: whoever comes here to die is dead serious about being liberated.
Pyres burn at almost every ghat in the city, but the most preferred place to get cremated is Manikarnika Ghat. It is said that the funeral pyres at Manikarnika never cease to burn: the flames can be seen round the clock, all through the year.
When I visited Manikarnika Ghat, a few pyres were ablaze. The ghat itself, however, seemed relatively smaller for its reputation, possibly because there was a lot of construction and restorative work going on around it at the time I visited.
Before I saw the cremation site, I visited the nearby Manikarnika Kund, a small, sacred pool of water with a secured boundary. A few steps lead down to the water. There was a plaque on the wall put up by the priests association of the city that spelled out what’s possibly the full name of the place: Shri Manikarnika Chakra Pushkarini Kund. Above the name, there was a line in Hindi that roughly translates as “The primary and ancient-most holy place of Kashi.”
Again, there are a few legends about the name. According to one, in an act of devotion to Shiva and Parvati, Lord Vishnu dug a beautiful lotus pool (pushkarini) at the place with his discus-shaped weapon, Chakra. This gave it the name Chakra Pushkarini Teerth. And when Shiva saw this pool, he was overcome with emotion and his body trembled, causing the jewel in his earring to drop in the pond, which then came to be known as Manikarnika (mani and karnika are Sanskrit for jewel and earring respectively).
In my mind, I was imagining Lord Shiva admiring the lotus pond in ancient times when I was startled by the sound of a bird that just flew above the kund. Despite all those legends and their significance, not many people seemed interested in giving it a second look—except a man and a woman who were sitting on the stairs leading down to the water. The boundary of the kund was secured by iron railings. Within the fencing, I spotted a gate but it seemed closed, so I wondered how the two got inside. They were sitting next to each other, slightly apart, each lost in their own chain of thought.
At the Manikarnika Ghat, I watched the pyres burn for a while and then made my way back through a narrow, serpentine street. I noticed a shop with the sign ‘Blue Door Lassi Shop.’ It was flocked by a lot of Gen Z youngsters and a couple of Westerners. I stood in the long queue, hoping to grab a special concoction of the curd shake that, going by the frenzy of click-clicks around, must have been made famous by the likes of Instagram. But just as my turn came, the large metal pot in which the shopkeeper had kept the lassi ran out. A fresh lot would need to be prepared, which would take several minutes. Already delayed, I was a bit irritated at the timing. “Forget it,” I told myself and walked on.
Fortunately, I chanced upon another shop close by that was selling not lassi but thandai. A cool drink made of milk and spices, thandai is quite popular, especially in the northern parts of India. There was no rush here and the guy tending to the shop even offered me a place to sit down while he prepared a glass of the drink for me. I watched him make it with patience and delight: it was apparent from his confident and steady hands that they were used to making it this way for long years, the recipe probably passed down through generations.
It was the best thandai I ever had in my life.
As I resumed my walk up the street toward Godowlia Chowk, there was a commotion within a short distance. The reason became clear in a few moments. I stepped on to a pavement stone and saw others rush hither and thither to avoid a herd of bovines that was marching past down the lane.
Before I emerged from that narrow street, I stopped by an old sweet shop. How old? The signboard read: Shri Rajbandu. Since 1887. I chose to buy Varanasi’s famous lal peda (If you ask me, it could give Mathura’s even more famous peda a run for its money!)
I stood near Godowlia Chowk for some time before going back to my hotel. I looked around me and saw a swarm of humanity just as you would see in any major, bustling city. People were rushing everywhere in a chaotic fashion, on foot, riding pillion on bikes and, not far from where I stood, in cars, buses, and other vehicles. There was a sense of urgency, of finishing what was on their mind, of getting on with life as usual, doing their duties, clicking pictures that would probably fill up their phones’ storage rather than become fond memories later on, or just rushing about so as to tick the check-boxes on their itineraries and lists.
The need for speed, even in a place as timeless as Varanasi, trumped everything else. What would Lord Shiva make of this and his city today? I thought.
Perhaps I should have stayed longer but I didn't get much time to ruminate on things that often seem wasteful to minds more attuned to a practical, go-go life.
But then, most times, I'm not much different from them.
Lost in such thoughts, I, too, was carried away hurriedly by the biker who soon came to pick me up, zipping expertly through the crowd and the traffic—honking as hell.
(All images here: Sanjay Gupta; All reality everywhere: Lord Shiva)
