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Varanasi: The City where the Past is always Present

Varanasi: The City where the Past is always Present

Author: Jo Rushby
Date: 2022-12-20

In this post-modern world, nothing is sacrosanct as the pace of life accelerates and memory is what happened the day before. Meditation is only a prelude to the helter-skelter that is to come and an interlude to what was.

The acme of movement surely must be Mumbai. A few days in Mumbai and you have a sense that, while places of worship still carry the sense of old devotion and centuries of architectural wonder, mobility patterns are going to have new threads. The Metro is coming. Streets are being dug up. Could this spell the end of the ubiquitous rickshaw and tiny black and yellow cabs that take you on a mesmerising ride for the equivalent of ten rand? But just as I was bemoaning the march of modernity, a magic carpet called Spicejet whisked me into another India.

Varanasi, one of the oldest cities on earth. Kashi, as it is otherwise known, City of Light, has its roots in Buddhism, spread wide into Hinduism and in the present day, is a mix of Muslims, Hindus, Jains and Buddhists. Its? multitudinous temples stretch like a prayer flag along the River Ganges, where every night, there is magic that envelops the ghats as dance, lights and flower offerings are floated down the river, and mantras bring the world to life.

Tomorrow, the dead will come down the steps to be burnt and liberated, like they have for millennia, and the devout to bathe, sinking their cloth wrapped bodies into its waters, brass pots raised high over their heads as the blessings of Om Nama Shiva rain down on their heads.

I am caught up in the chanting, the rhythm, the bending, temples, offerings, fire, death, life, moksha. I do not want to leave, for having travelled all over the world, I know that there is nowhere quite like this on earth.

As Diane Eck puts it: ?The city displays the layering of the Hindu tradition like a palimpsest, an old parchment that has been written upon and imperfectly erased again and again, leaving the old layers partially visible?.

A seeker looking for answers, I wander for days through the cool, light-filtered labyrinth of alleys, where only bicycles and scooters can squeeze, and where cows have the divine right of way. Stopping for masala chai, sweets, and the finest wafer-thin dosas, I walk into dead ends, only to find openings in others and always the river beckons.

Something in me changed in Varanasi. For in this city of light, I found a holy trinity: the Ganges, Shiva, and Kashi, ?the grace that leads one to perfect bliss? (KKh 35. 7-10). In Varanasi, clock time is suspended, for here on the banks of Mother Ganga, life and death circle each other without fear.