Tourism

City of Life and Call

54 India & You January-February 2011

Varanasi

Tourism

Varanasi Bodhgaya

Kolkata

Our first plunge into the Indian cauldron highlighted the sharp contrast between the hurried, ant-like life in Kolkata and the absolute tranquility of Bodh Gaya. The third stage of our voyage along the Ganga takes us to the heart of the mystical India, to the convergence of beliefs and their practice. Varanasi, also known as Benares, is a very peculiar city, captivating despite its touristic dimensions. It is still possible to lose oneself in the recesses of the old city where the noise stops, only to recommence later in a crazy fashion at the Ghats. Charles Isabey takes you on the discovery of this timeless city, out of the ordinary, in the midst of a cultural tour around

of Death

the Burning Ghats or the workshop of an artisan working with the famous Banarasi silk. Photos by Charles Isabey.
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India through the window of Indian Railways

As I return to my berth in the train, the countryside outside my window stretches for miles with the same exuberance as the

rest of India. Looking on, in the hot and humid day, are inundated rice fields that stretch up to the horizon, pretty much like mirrors spiked with the green of the fields and blue of the skies above. The large cumulonimbus clouds of the Monsoons rise towards the setting sun. Their burgeoning flanks, clear and precise, are iridescent with warm pastel colours of the sky. While the earth begins to fall in the penumbra, the rice fields shine and from this dissipating reflection arises the night slowly. A silver light now fills the rice fields and the water is sometimes disturbed by the croaking of a toad. Slowly the countryside begins to disappear and the lights of Varanasi begin to appear. After a few minutes of travelling through the outskirts of this ancient city, the train finally comes to a halt at the station, which is overflowing with passengers, as well as beggars and naked orphans playing on the tracks.

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The city with its dirty and twisted walls has something immutable, something frozen. This procession of accumulated years leads to a tempo which is perceived to be more at ease, more majestic than those of the men running around. The stones of the temple walls are worn, weathered by the touch of millions of hands over the centuries and successive layers of

40 centuries of human touch

Varanasi is perhaps the oldest living city of the world. While some other old cities of the world like Baghdad, are seeing their reconstruction for the 13th time, it is important to remember that Varanasi has been inhabited continuously and perhaps in the same shape for the last 4000 years. The holiest of the holi cities on the Ganga, its fame is built on two foundations. The first is the large number of old and mortally sick who come here to die, in the hope to see their ashes dispersed in the Ganga in order to escape the perennial cycle of life and death and to reach the Paradise directly. The other speciality of Varanasi is its silk. An art that has developed since the era of the Mughals in the 15th century and the business is still controlled by the ancient families of merchants and artisans who follow the age-old model where the merchant supplies the primary material and who pick up the finished goods for selling all over the world.

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the candle wax make for unexpected sculptures. This is perhaps another sacred aspect of Varanasi, a place where the streets are imbibed in the time of humans, but where the walls ooze a sense of eternity. People also come here to die, perhaps, because we know that if they returned in the next life, at least the streets would be familiar!

A morning at the Chowk

It is six in the morning. The streets of the old city begin to wake up, though still free of the hordes of tourists for a few hours. Slowly, the cows return to their pastures of the garbage dumps, right in the midst of traders conducting their business and the

hurrying pilgrims. The guts of the city open in an alley leading to the Main Ghat where there is already a big gathering. People come here to consult astrologers, to pray, to take a quick wash between the two sacred ablutions, pressed between the boats and the steps of the Ghats. The morning glow paints a canvas of ochre and saffron, covered with the vibrant colours of the saris. The women hang them in the open air to dry. And in the backdrop of the light, the shadows of the passers-by print a moving fresco on these colourful rectangles, offered to the daylight. A bit further on, I sit down for a moment, before the heat becomes too unbearable. In this hidden corner, small scenes of everyday life take place, the daily life around the Ganga, not exactly the same thing that I had witnessed in Kolkata. Here, things move much more slowly, people are less agitated and this nonchalance is pleasant in a country which is moving at a rapid pace otherwise. Some children are having a competition of jumping into the river from a small boat that is on the banks below. Just near by, buffaloes, which have been organised in such a fine line on the submerged steps of the Ghat that only their black heads are visible, ruminate thoughtfully. On another boat, fishermen take out their fishing nets, darned with the threads of fortune and spread out in a beautiful medley. On my right, a small temple, its feet washed by the flooded waters of the Ganga, is wide open to the devotees. A

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priest with a silver beard is sleeping in front of a door inside the temple. The early morning light draws a subtle outlines of a man, lying on the floor, sporting a saffron turban whose colours have been brightened up by the morning light. The symmetry of the perspective of these two doors with this sleeping form, seen against the light, creates the impression of an Oriental painting or even a watercolour by Pierre Loti lost in the grandeur of India.

The Eternal Fires of Mannikarna Ghat

From afar in the inextricable streets of Varanasi, a strong smell of something burnt advances and becomes more powerful as you move. At the beginning of the street leading to the Ganga, down the stairs, smoke rises in unequal spirals on blackened

facades. The odour attacks my nose and the suspended dust hits me in the eyes. The activity is indeed hectic on this bank of the Ganga. On the steps move untouchables whose sole purpose is to keep the sacred fires alive, allowing others to climb higher, faster towards a paradise that is far removed from all the cycles of reincarnations. People here are hurried, pushing each other, screaming, spitting and the dead remain quiet, without a murmur. They wisely await their turn, in theirqueues, on their bamboo stretchers. There are several dogs as well at the Ghats, trying to steal a bite from the bodies, but risking the batons of the ever watchful guards. The entire Ghat is enveloped in a suffocating heat, smoke, dust, actions and voices. It is like an intense sensation of having been projected ahead of oneself, far away from

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anyone and alone, terribly alone. Behind the barrier of fire, and in the river, we can barely make out the forms of tourists who come here as voyeurs, only to satisfy a morbid curiosity, their guilt reduced by the distance and by the caution of the local boatmen. They follow the golden calf of authenticity in poor countries without seeing the deep injuries their behaviour causes. The fierce opposition of the Indians at the Ghat at the sight of my camera and my tote says a lot about the abuse by western tourists. Luckily, the evening before I had met a family which had invited me to attend the entire ceremony from the beginning. The family had just cremated a grandmother of 90 years, who had died three days earlier of a heart attack in one of the hospices of Varanasi. The body had remained nearly 24 hours in an undertakers place as all the refrigerated places in the morgue were full. The old body was terribly skinny. There comes a stage in life where leanness erases all signs of gender, the attractive traits of the body, which was once desirable, fade so much so as to lead to agony. The agony is found aplenty around the burning Ghats. Older people, who come to die in Varanasi, expend the little energy that they have in reserve. The rituals are complex. The body is covered in several fabrics, the first is white cotton shroud, followed by a silk covering sheet. If the colour of the silk is white, it is a man who is being cremated, red for women and yellow for the elder, without any gender distinction. Children and pregnant women are not cremated. Before putting the body on the pyre, it is washed one

last time in the Ganga, the shroud becomes transparent, highlighting the features of death. To light the pyre, the closest male relative of the deceased has to go around the pyre five times and after having put the fire, smashes the skull in order to allow the soul of the deceased to escape the mortal envelope that the human body is. As a sign of mourning, the person has

to get his head clean shaven, with the exception of a little clutch of hair behind his head, and then he takes another dip in the Ganga to purify himself. The next day ashes from the pyre are collected and put in an urn, covered with a red cloth and this is taken in a boat for being immersed in the middle of the river.

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Far from the fanfare of brochures for the tourists, Varanasi is perhaps one of the most puzzling destinations that I have ever visited. The Ganga becomes complex here...

The Ganga and Europe

The heat, the body and the fire. Its all a question of habit and it is just at these moments that we feel totally denuded, in front of something so big and grand, in front of a sacred fire which has been burning for over 1000 years, in front families which are happy to be indebted for many years just so that they can offer a dignified death to their parents and finally in front an otherness which comes back and hits us in our face, just like a boomerang, and puts our western habits and our futile egos in a relative manner, just where they belong. Here, just at this moment, right in the midst of cattle and butchers shops, we get closer to being an ethnographer, just like Strauss in America where the significant differences between the two cultures show up in the most flagrant manner. It is upto us to fill this gap intelligently. The light, the suspended dust particles and mixed odours, the blues of the small pathways in the dusk, the confused and stunned views of Varanasi give a mystical image of the Ganga. It is bit like a post card that we have here, a huge jump into Hinduism, which we must resolve not to understand and not to unfold its mysteries. Far from the fanfare of brochures for the tourists, Varanasi is perhaps one of the most puzzling destinations that I have ever visited. The Ganga becomes complex here, it touches a sacred ground which is extremely delicate for a westerner to tread upon because at the heart of the culture of this country and of Hinduism, tinged with beliefs, exotic rituals,

prayers literally sealed from the foreigners. The reconciliation between the massive brown mass of water, carrying debris of all kinds, and the feared and venerated Goddess is not very clear. The rest of the trip towards the origin of the Ganga in the Himalayas will surely bring its own set of answers. Haridwar and Gangotri are waiting for us. Let us leave here the poetic contrast orchestrated masterfully by Varanasi and let us move towards this remote end of the world, sandwiched between Nepal and Tibet.

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