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Sleepy tourists follow singing pilgrims on the road to the Ganga. At this wee hour, a handful of pilgrims and vendors keep alive this road, which was a river of cycle rickshaws yesterday evening. The motley crowd takes a detour at one of the entrances to the Vishwanatha temple, the famed destination in Kashi aka Varanasi aka Banaras. Their bhajans will wake up the deity, Shiva. Then they will visit the nearby Sakshi Vinayak temple, where Ganesha keeps an attendance register for the devotees of his father.

Boundless faith, timeless city

Don Sebastian
2007-03-08 19:46:02

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comrades. Ask his name and he says he is the namesake of the late Devilal, the wrestler-politician. The bond between spiritual life and a strong body is nothing new. Several ancient houses of sages grew as physical forces. Even now, sages from certain sects do incredible feats.

At Harishchandra Ghat, two pyres are burning. Amid buffaloes and goats grazing on the naked bank, a strange figure - a saffron-clad sage with his eyeballs rolled over - stands guard to a burning pyre, like Harshchandra, the just king who became a gravedigger. The shamshan (crematorium) ghat is named after the king whose legend of ultimate faith and self-negation is a leitmotif of the holy town. This is the second important burning ghat in Varanasi after Manikarnika.

Upstream, a huge water plant purifies Ganga water for the denizens of Varanasi. Even Gangajal, which purifies the soul, needs municipal clarification. Somewhere near Asi Ghat, I crossed the Asi river and never knew about it. I took it for a discharge canal from the town. Varanasi, sandwiched between the Varuna and the Asi, got its name from the two tributaries of the Ganga. Between the two streams, 52 ghats, in a five-kilometre stretch, line the Ganga.

Wonders of Varanasi are still unexplored. Countless temples dedicated to almost every deity in the Hindu pantheon dot the town. There is even a temple dedicated to Bharata Mata (Mother India), opened by Mahatma Gandhi in 1936. A hub of culture, where once lived Buddha and Mahavira, Tulsidas and Adi Shankara, Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh, Dayananda Saraswati and Vivekananda, Varanasi has centuries' imprint on it. Banaras Hindu University, Kashi Vidyapeeth and Sanskrit University are its temples of education.

Ganga, through which Varanasi's craftsmen traded their creation to other parts of India, still keeps the town alive with an unending flow of pilgrims. The town is famous for its trademark Banaras Silk. Trade route has changed, but Banaras silk and brocades are still a sought-after commodity. At noon, bazaars of Varanasi are maddeningly crowded and noisy. Rickshaws have once again conquered the streets. Every alley is throbbing with commerce. It's said Varanasi was a busy town since the beginning of time. But the hundreds of pilgrims descending on the town everyday will keep it busy till the end of time.