This series of posts about Varanasi has been long–but the city is unique, and no series of posts however long can fully do justice to the immensity of it. And so the time comes to conclude and move on. And what better way to do this than to post a series of pictures that to my mind show the beauty of the city bathed in splendid early morning light and dancing with the river!
Happy memories!
I can’t believe it’s been a month since I’ve posted anything here. Time flies! Time to get busy!
The Nepali temple in Varanasi could be the single most unique spot in a city that is arguably composed entirely of unique spots. But–Nepal? Really?
Yes!
There is evidence to suggest that the property was actually transferred by the ruler of Varanashi–then called Kashi–to the Nepalese king back in 1843. And the temple itself is a replica of the famous Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu.
Look at the workmanship in the wood carving!
Many of the other details are also quite charming.
And from the temple’s platform, we had a unique perspective of the city’s quotidian life: visitors walking along the ghats; a tired pilgrim stopping for a rest; an Indian tour group, perhaps a family.
Decorations is probably not the right word. All the small and large, bright and cheerful, old and new decorative items placed near doorways in Varanasi are, I believe, religious in nature. It’s not like having pink flamingos in the yard. It’s more like having a statue of the virgin Mary in the yard.
But still, that said, these are wonderful to behold, even for a non-Indian non-Hindu like me who doesn’t know a tenth of the symbolism.
Take this one, for example. Probably the Hindi script explains it. Probably any person on the street could have explained it. I don’t know what it is–but I love the colors and the composition.
The next one I do understand a bit of.
That is, I’m not sure about the statue at the top, though he’s almost certainly a god. Likewise the person at the bottom left. The blue person at the bottom right, though, is, I believe, Krishna playing his flute. So since Krishna is an incarnation of Vishnu, perhaps this is a shrine to Vishnu.
Here’s an elaborate one. (I’m not going to guess.)
I believe the next two are representations of the monkey king Hanuman. The second one surely is (can you see the monkey-like features of the nose and jaw?); and they are both in similar poses, carrying two little people on their shoulders.
Here’s a more elaborate rendition of Hanuman. Hanuman is believed to be an incarnation of the god Shiva, founder of the city of Varanasi. Hanuman symbolizes strength and perseverance in the face of obstacles.
This next one is sweet–a representation of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of good luck and good beginnings, the remover of obstacles. He appears at the entryway to many of the houses. He is popular everywhere, but particularly in Varanasi because he is the son of Shiva, founder of the city.
Here’s a bell, a simple enough object yet beautifully integrated into the fabric of the street. And it too has a scene in bas relief below it.
The next doorway is, I believe, the entrance to a local temple.
Finally, we come to the winged lions. I don’t know what to make of them. Two of these flank either side of an elaborately decorated doorway. They are not a common symbol in Hinduism but neither are they unheard-of. Why here? And is the building they guard a temple? To whom? People’s comings and goings give no clue.
The oldest part of Varanasi is a maze of pedestrian streets. Now, Varanasi has been continuously inhabited since about 1200 BC, but you will be happy to know that the old part of the city is not that old, mostly dating from the eighteenth century. Still, the streets are quite narrow. And traffic here–pedestrian and especially motorbike–can be quite as intense and daunting as vehicular traffic in other parts of India, and just as loud. And just as scary. A person could get killed here–but this is Varanasi. At least you’d go directly to Paradise. And too, this is India. It all works out without actual injury.
All photographs in this blog post were taken when I felt safe enough to do so. Which is to say, when there was very little traffic, none of it with wheels.
Here are two young men with a vehicular assault weapon.
And here are a sampling of the kind of narrow streets they might be using it on. Note that these are NOT one-way streets.
I particularly like this last one, which appears to suggest that the street would like to get even narrower, had someone not shored up the buildings on either side.
On this street near the crematorium, wood is piled to the height of a building.
Next, we look at some typical shopping streets. As you can see, motorbikes are everywhere. One nice feature is the benches and seats along the street–suggesting that an exhausted and harried pedestrian might refresh himself by sitting down. And perhaps the tea-wallah will be along in a few minutes with a refreshing drink.
It’s hard to know how to unravel the complex city of Varanasi. There is so much energy here. But here’s what I’m going to try: Having discussed a single merchant–the seller of silk shawls–I’ll move to shops, and from there to streets, doorways and decorations, then the Nepali temple, buildings, and finally larger land views. Somewhere in there, if I don’t start getting too anxious to move on, there’s a nice little digression on animals.
So then, picture yourself on a narrow street. Two of you can walk side by side, but only if you’re pretty friendly. It is a pedestrian street, which is generally a nice feature, but in Varanasi, pedestrian also includes bicycles, motor bikes, and motor cycles, whose drivers are not going to let a mere few hundred walkers get in their way. There are also carts and occasionally animals. And so there is a chaos of sound, mostly horns blaring Watch out!, but also conversations, bells, and other unidentifiable noises. People too are pushing to get by. Or stopping so that you have to push to get by. It is intense. Your heart is pumping adrenalin; you don’t want to lose your group. Or–never mind the group–you are in constant fear of getting run over.
And here, on every side, are the most interesting tiny shops. What are these people doing? What are they selling? Often you can’t figure it out in just the second and a half you have before you will be surrounded by swarms of strangers and lost forever.
I hope these men are not preparing food, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Okay, this is definitely food.
And so is this.
Here’s a bakery.
I’m pretty sure this is food–the man on the right is selling some kind of leaves wrapped around some kind of filling. I think.
More food!
Here’s the tea-wallah operating from a conveniently vacant doorstep.
I would have liked to stop and watch this metal-worker if I could have.
Metal products.
Near to my heart–a bookstore!
Barber shop and possibly also the local word-of-mouth news center.
Only in India! A storefront shop full of wedding parapharnalia. (Stacks of turbans in the foreground)
I have a penchant for falling under the influence of skillfully persuasive merchants of beautiful products. You may remember the rug merchant in Fes, from whom I bought a rug even though I had no place to put it (It now handsomely adorns the bed in the guest bedroom).
In Varanasi, it was the silk merchant. Dan and I were on a tour of the streets of old Varanasi with another couple, John and Marie from London. Toward the end of the tour, our guide took us to the rooftop of a five-story home in the old quarter.
Peeks of the home life as we climbed the stairs were more interesting than the views from the rooftop. In fact, the rooftop view was possibly the least interesting part of the tour.
I think it was about here that Dan suspected some kind of sales pitch would soon be coming.
And he was right.
At the bottom of the stairs, we were met by an Indian gentleman of perhaps about our own age. Our guide introduced him as Arun Himatsingka, the owner of the house. He invited us to have tea with him in a room on the ground floor that was comfortably covered with something soft like a mattress and covered with clean white fabric.
It was about here that I too realized some kind of sales pitch would soon be coming.
But the room looked inviting–like some of the tea houses we had passed on the street–and we did want the opportunity to chat with someone, the homeowner, who lived here in Varanasi. So after a quick nonverbal check among the four of us, we accepted his offer, took off our shoes, and went in.
Mr. Himatsingka had an interesting story. His house was very old (did he say three hundred years?). It had been in his family for five or six generations, but when his father died, it was inherited by Mr. Himatsingka and his brother. The house was divided into two, and the brother sold his half. Members of Mr. Himatsingka’s extended family still lived in in various apartments in this half of the house.
Mr. Himatsingka works in the wholesale silk trade, a business founded by his great-grandfather. He sells to fashion houses, designers, and department stores overseas (mostly in Europe), who appreciate the high quality of his fabric and make it into high-end gowns and sell his shawls. He oversees the production of silk materials in villages some sixty kilometers (forty miles) from Varanasi. The production, he told us, has to be done in these remote villages because the skilled and patient labor needed to do his hand-weaving was too expensive in Varanasi itself–if indeed it could be found at all. And, sadly, it was also vanishing in the villages.
As the children of his weavers become more educated than their parents, they no longer want to be weavers. Their ambitions run to the kind of work, such as computer programming, that can be found only in the cities. And so he finds himself in a business where demand is high and growing, but it is becoming vanishingly difficult to produce the supply.
And his own children, like those of the weavers, are not interested in running this local business. They want to work for multinational corporations. They will move away. “After me,” he says, “this business is no more.”
The moment is at hand.
“Would you like to see some of my shawls?”
Marie and I, as it turns out, would. Of course. We exchange looks with our husbands, who have expressions resembling the long-suffering martyrs in Baroque paintings. And with the patience of those saints, they allow us to proceed.
First, Mr. Himatsingka demonstrates that his wares are real silk by setting fire to the end of a fringe, which burns to ash and can be lightly rubbed away. This was as compared to a product you might find in the streets of Varanasi, which when burned, he shows us, melts into a black sticky globule.
What follows next is a riot of glorious color as shawl after lovely shawl is unfolding from boxes and thrown gaily like a celebration into Marie’s and my laps. We are shown first, his lowest quality shawls, which are utterly gorgeous. From there, we move to three levels of higher quality, each with a higher thread count and a more detailed, more tightly woven pattern. Each takes longer to produce and (of course) carries a higher price tag.
Oh yes, make no mistake. We want them all.
But a bitter decision time is now at hand, and the pile of glory on our laps dwindles into much smaller piles of maybe. A folding-wallah appears in the room to put away the rejects as Mr. Himatsingka encourages us to “buy both.”
Interestingly, there is no conflict between Marie and me for any particular shawls. They are all beautiful, and there are far too many of them. Our struggle is the age-old conflict desire and reason, between beauty and a place to put it. Between how much we want these new shawls and how many shawls are already hanging unused in our closets.
In the end, I have five shawls, and I have promised to give three of them as gifts, and to also give away five shawls that I currently own that I never wear. Not a bad deal.
Meanwhile, it has grown dark outside. Exhausted, we skip the Golden Temple part of the tour and head back to our hotels for a beer to celebrate surviving the silk-shawl temptations with only small financial damage.
Downstream from our hotel (the friendly and convenient Hotel Alka) the scene from the Ganges turns darker and more surreal. The buildings seem less colorful, grimmer. Smoke rises from fires in the distance.
Yes, those are fires where bodies have been burned. Yes, those are piles and piles of logs for more fires later. (There is also a crematorium, and I believe the story is that most of the bodies are cremated there, but no one is denied a cremation in Vanarasi–so the poor are cremated on these ghats.
There is also, a bit farther downstream, a Piranesian ruin of a stupa that has become…just an accepted part of this bizarre landscape.
Bodies are brought to Varanasi from many places in India. They are first bathed in the Ganges River and then taken to be cremated.
No one cries at a funeral in Varanasi, we were told. In Varanasi, there is no sorrow, only joy. Later, when the mourners go home again, they will cry.
We headed back upriver to the hotel, where scenes that seemed bright and festive on the way down now seem somehow like part of an entirely other world.
At the hotel, the manager told us that people who are fortunate enough to die in Varanasi–not necessarily those who came here to die but even those who just accidentally happen to die while they were here–go directly to paradise and do not have to be reborn again. This is an occasion of great joy. There is no sadness in Varanasi, only happiness and good fortune.
First of all, let me say that I believe the Ganges River is polluted. Not only have I read a most informative article on the subject in Smithsonian magazine, but also I have pictures.
The stone configuration is a kind of washboard for those who wish to wash their clothing in the Ganges River. The other stuff is…er, other stuff.
I mention this because one very popular activity on the ghats (steps) of the Ganges is bathing. In the river.
And not just bathing. I saw people pouring the water over their heads. I saw people drinking from it. Dan saw a man brushing his teeth in the Ganges.
Nearby, a man worships in a temple to Ganga, the Ganges, the divine river. Westerners practice yoga on its banks.
It isn’t just the pollution. Dead bodies are washed in the Ganges. People are cremated nearby and their ashes…are taken home again? Mostly? But more about this in the next post.
Maybe this is just my Western squeamishness, but as beautiful a river as the Ganges is, I would not bathe in it.
We arrived in Varanasi after dark. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Having left the hotel in Khajuraho at 8 am for what google maps estimated was a 6.5-hour drive–and the driver said would be eight hours–we expected to arrive in enough time to settle into our hotel before dinner. Instead, we had a bone-jolting twelve-hour drive over roads that were sporadically under repair–or that certainly should have been, too late and weary and sore to even consider dinner.
I consider it a personal act of bravery that Dan and I nevertheless signed up for a 6 am boat tour of the Ganges River the next morning. But then, instead of a day and a half, we now had only the one complete day in Varanasi, and we had to make the most of it.
A word about our hotel: We were staying at the budget Hotel Alka (see my review here). It’s a great little hotel that is right on one of the ghats overlooking the river. So we didn’t have far to walk to our boat. This is good, since it wasn’t yet the least bit light when we left.
Now, not light is definitely not the same thing as not noisy. To the contrary, there were shouts and singing, bells and drums, a mayhem of noises, happy and intense. There was, in fact, a major celebration of the sunrise-to-be going on just one or two ghats upriver.
Farther up it wasn’t quite as crowded, but people were already bathing in the holy river at this sacred time of day.
The faintest light was creeping into the sky, enhancing the city’s unique beauty.
People were beginning the activities of the day.
And–beautifully–the sun rose over the Ganges River.
