This year the monsoon has come late and our family is packing up our bags in 45c heat to get ready to visit Two Chimneys in Gethia, Kumoun. It is a lovely and quaint 150 year old British Bungalow on multiple levels hidden in a hilly forest of fir trees. I can see myself now sitting on their verandah next to the amazing outdoor pool with a cold one in hand forgetting about all the other things in life. As I pack my bags I wonder why I am still living in Varanasi after all these years and not there in the Himalaya!
The great lila of life takes us in many different directions so after writing a Hindu Studies course for a small university I ended up living in Varanasi, the most holy city of the Hindu world, and running an internship program there for 9 years. Varanasi, which is alternately known as Kashi or Banaras is a place having untold layers of culture, amazing architecture, wonderfully confusing alleyways and is renowned for being a centre of traditional music, hand-woven wedding saris, historic Sanskrit schools and ancient temples along the Ganga river. I first heard an often quoted couplet, one that is never far from the lips of all true Banarasi’s of whom I now count myself, while I was sitting on the great stone steps of Tulsi Ghat.
“Rand, Sand, Seedi, Sanyasi, Inse Bacche to Sevai Kashi!”
A rough translation is, “Widows, Bulls, Stairs, Saints, Save us from these so we can reach Kashi!” I think it is true humilty that the very things that sum up the spiritual lifeblood of the holiest city of the Hindu world is dealt with in acidic tongue and cheeky humour, perhaps by the lightning wit of famed 15th century local weaver-poet Kabir, the Muslim saint with a Hindu guru, to whom this poem is sometimes attributed. We all know that the housing for the widowed could lead to a loss of virtue, humble Nandi’s descendents wandering in narrow alleys can gore you with a quick flip of their sharp horns, a misguided step while navigating the famous stone staircases leading to the holy Ganga can land you up with a cracked skull (or bruised ego at the least) and the ever pious religious mendicants that populate the city are always ready to extract a price to lead you to salvation!
Well if you don’t have enough time to sit on the steps next to the Ganga your whole life to find these quotes then I suggest you stop into Harmony Bookstore in Assi ghat and ask Rakesh Singh, the proprietor, which books he is recommending these days. Often you will be surrounded by other international and local browsers, research scholars, budding (or decayed) authors, university students and Govinda Baba, a famous resident sadhu and former passport holder, who enjoys spending his days of renunciation paging through the colourful coffee table books and vast array of sacred literature held in Harmony’s cave of knowledge!
I can almost hear the silence of the Himalaya calling and ready myself for the hustle and bustle of the Varanasi Cantt station but I know once I finish off the holiday (and paying for it!) I will notice something is missing. It is then that I realize that the city that is said to sit on Shiva’s trident, outside of time and hidden from Yama, the god of death, is the one place to call home and that even sipping a beer under the fir trees with the cool breeze of the Himalaya can’t hold a candle to living in the great Kashi, the City of Light!
It’s already time to journey back to Banaras and I haven’t even left yet!
