City with a Unique Sensation!

Roads no matter how they are, they are always story. Some give rest to the tired feet, some make you 

dream beneath the stars. I like to take road less travelled: Saransh Goila.”

Local People Crossing the river on boat early morning near Gai Ghat.

  Dreams* are always reliable, especially when you Dream* to travel to your Dream* place. You can dream endlessly and still remain unsatisfied. I’ve learnt during my reporting training that there tend to remain a bitter truth “behind the scenes”, let’s call it: chamak-damak. Ok! Let’s come out of over-thinking. Let me take you across my over exhilarated trip to the Land of Ghats. I expected it to be a thrilling experience, but, it turned out to be a mess! Many avoidable mistakes by us and moreover my decision to take along a group of non-enthusiast people who might not have watched Masaan! My mistake, deadly mistake! While it’s a common notion that mostly youngsters would take up adventurous trips and preferably visit Spiti or Kasol, I ask, is it mandatory? Is it mandatory to go river rafting instead of taking up a relaxing break in Rishikesh? What I believe is that, if you are young with restless blood in your body, you could easily turn-up your trip adventurous. Even if you are in the dull lanes of Rohtak or Bareilly. So I chose what I desired: Varanasi, a city with a different sensation and flavor... 

A man playing a flute near Sarnath Temple.

Two years of planning and yet the day came like another day. “Na mein yha aaya hun, na mujhe  kisi ne bheja hai, mujhe BHI ganga maa ne bulaya hai!” But let me clear, I travelled to Varanasi not as a Tirath Yatri (I am yet to attain straight beard tough!), but as an ordinary explorer to one of the oldest Indian cities. Hundreds of people squeezed up in the narrow alleys where one have to be careful of not stepping upon dogs, cow-dung and dead rats. (I shall remain silent on the culture of spitting, red spitting.) Right away through the start, the journey from Delhi to Varanasi was dull. Since, we were travelling by reserved A/C coach where travelers are usually as dull as the window panes, generally, many avoid gossiping or in my language having political nonk-jhonk.

Devdari Waterfall in Chandraprabha Wildlife Sanctuary.

Staying at a Hotel just a stone’s throw from Ghats, I simply braced for two days just to build up my 

enthusiasm to attend the roam around the crowded lanes of the city. But somehow my eagerness shifted somewhere else, once we decided to travel back to Delhi by flight, my first flight. Undoubtedly, Varanasi, Benaras or Kashi is all about Ganga ghats with yellow fields stretching out onto the mist topped barren land in the horizon. After roaming or let me make it simple after wasting two days there, in some usual tasks that could have been done in any other city. However, it felt amazing travelling to Devdari Waterfall in Chandraprabha Wildlife Sanctuary near Chaundali,about 70 kilometers from Varanasi and captured some unique portraits which turned out to be a stress buster. 

Ganga Aarti at Dashashwamedh Ghat.

Visited some (pre-decided) decades old temples in Sarnath as well as Kashi Vishwananth Temple & Hanuman Temple meanwhile enjoying auto-rides full of swag and backache. Every lane in the four kilometer radius of Assi and Kashi Vishwananth was full of bikes and rickshaws, as much as the roads of Khari Baoli or Urdu Bazaar of Old Delhi. With extreme enthusiasm, I attended Aarti at Dashashwamedh Ghat, main ghat in the city, followed by Puja at Kashi VishwananthTemple. Best way to adore Ganga is while sailing on a boat, and that too, during sunrise or sunset. The glimmer of Ganga with Burning Dia are no less than floating diamonds. Ganga here, is flat and quiet, but is more smudged unlike Rishikesh or Haridwar. Reasons are numerous.

Firstly, the ritual of pouring ashes of the burnt body of departed kin along with some other sacred non-biodegradable items into the river adds more to the change. Here comes the Manikarnika Ghat: one of the oldest sacred ghats in India. It is believed that a human soul gets moksha, when cremated here after death. I, along with my sister, stepped down the ghat to observe the contaminated Ganga near the ghat at around 4 in the morning, where we were greeted by a small man with a red cloth on his shoulder and rudraksha mala was shinning on his chest. Dheeraj, 32, works at one of the seven cremation “beds” at the ghat. With unclear English, he explained the significance of this 5th century ghat and what my ignorance turned to attention was when he mentioned about the half burned bodies dumped into Ganga. “Generally, we burn the body for three hours, but Kabhi-Kabhi there is huge waiting, and in three hours male’s hips and female’s breast doesn’t burn completely, so we have to carry the particular body on the boat and dump it somewhere in the middle of Gangaji.” 

Night view of last rites at Manikarnika Ghat.

At the same time, I saw a boy of about 15 with a covered body beside him and my eyes filled with strange questions. He was staring at us while waiting for his relatives to come. With a Thank You and a “donation” of Rupees Fifty in Dheeraj’s hand, we moved on to find some peaceful flat surface downstairs. The buzzing sounds of Ganga streams colliding with stairs & Mahamrityunjay Mantra being played in the backdrop and that too at 5 am, I felt heaven after meditating for about fifteen minutes in the same ambience. Secondly, the city of Kanpur, from where Ganga passes too, has its most of the habitat thriving along the river banks, thus excess of pollution along with leather factory’s waste straight into the water. Moreover, no matter how much the previous government or the present government invest in cleaning the river and ghats, the mentality of throwing anything and everything into Ganga is still the same. The common notion among public especially Hindus is “Ganga ji mein boht shakti hai, sab shudh kr dijiyega.” 

A view of ghat with long flags.

Somehow, please allow me to not write more about this(mostly censored topic of religion) ,which may 

“hurt hindu sentiments”, as if I’ve lost my right to introspect about my own religion - a right that is 

available to every Hindu – which should remain valid always, as per the established tenets of Hinduism 

itself. (As I write this, a case has been registered against Kamal Haasan in Varanasi itself, for hurting the Hindu sentiments.) 

Har Har Mahadev!