Varanasi – The best of both worlds

Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous business. (‘Travels with a donkey’ by RL Stevenson)

Lighted lanes

Lallan* sat maudlin next to me, wracking in sobs that his long, flowing hair bobbed. I put my arms around him, hugging him from the side. Espying the goings on from a distance, my friend thought I had found someone else in her absence and returned to the market to buy more religious trinkets. Under the soft neon lights that beaded the banks of the Ganges, totemic flags designative of each ghat fluttered in a mild breeze. A sadhu I had befriended some days ago was spreading a mat on the stone steps for his customary meditation before going to sleep; he would sit in a trance that segued into slumber, eyes wide open. His orange robe a speck of welcome colour against the looming sandstone brown of the leviathan turrets of the Brij Rama Palace hotel. Rarely having consoled a man before, I turned to look at Lallan with some amount of trepidation and my worst fears came founded – he was shedding copious tears.

“Everything will be alright,” I stuttered the most meaningless consolation words in history.

“I don’t think so,” he blubbered back. I had a strong feeling he was right. 

The many hues of divinity

“Look at now,” I didn’t give up. “Tourism has picked up, many are visiting than before.” I was on assignment which I didn’t tell him for fear that it might clamp him up. I was your regular tourist to Kashi** – so invested in this world that the interest had encroached into other worlds as well. Lallan, a tourist guide, had been on the wallaby during the whole of 2020 when even the dead postponed their urned visit to the ghats. I assured him that I had many travelling friends and would make it a point to refer his name. He looked at me with large unblinking eyes, twinkling with all the tears, and smiled.

“I also have everything you need – LSD, heroin, hashish, weed…” The jeremiad abruptly gave way to a promising rhapsody. 

“Why do you need all that when you have thandai?” Being high on the cannabis-infused bhang and other milky permutations the past few days, I was reluctant to surrender my loyalties too soon. 

“Come with me to my friend’s place and see for yourself,” he said getting up and dragging me by my hand. “Buy only if you like, I promise you will see Banaras itself in a new light.” Why new light, the bhang had been making me see the place in newer shapes even. Just as I was going native in a way, melting into the crowd, we bumped into my friend.

The reciprocity of relief was magical as the mephitic air was taken over by chemical wafts.

Anything for Pappu

“Ninety eight percent of my guests are foreigners.” Mr Talwar sat behind his cluttered desk and enlightened me on his occupancy patterns, I was checking in. 

Ghat’s the way I like it

I wasn’t sure whether he meant it as recognition of my good taste in choosing his property or a rebuke for not being a foreigner myself; his eyes were unrecognisably elongating and swivelling behind thick glasses. As I peered back at him, it felt his eyeballs took a while to return to their original place in the sockets and left a greyish trail while at it. Surrounding him were framed certificates from homestay and hotel room aggregators all vying with each other to say how fabulous Mr Talwar was. Behind him was a clock that had stopped working; when I pointed it out to him he dismissed it as one would a fuel dung patty fallen off the drying wall. From the table began a conurbation of black and white photographs that narrated the history of the place extending all the way to the walls. Some of them were quite impressive in their dimensions and most were immaculately retouched. Mr Talwar had earned his certificates.

“I belong to the Khatri caste, sure you have heard of, being an Indian?” He asked me, his eyes spinning like a Ferris wheel optical illusion through the lens. I informed him with all the apology I could muster that I hadn’t. They were apparently a mercantile community who excelled at handling figures – Mr Talwar himself used to be a bank manager, probably with more years post retirement than at service. A propitious man, he called out to Pappu, a meek creature with downcast eyes but a genial mien, for tea. I asked for mine to have some ginger in it; the mix was just perfect. I looked at Pappu with immense love after the first sip. Pappu smiled and walked away without looking at me; I turned around to see Mr Talwar’s eyes returning to their sockets from where Pappu stood like the genie to Aladdin’s lamp. 

Magical nights – nightly ritual by the Ganges

The place itself was one of the finest along the ghats and most of the rooms faced the Ganges. Room windows were netted to keep monkeys at bay. The sunrise from the room was a splendid reveille which duelled with my dulled senses from all the infused sweet milk. Besides in-room dining, there was a terrace eat-out; monkeys climbing up the window meant somebody was having their meal above. Followed by a scream and shoo and little pink patooties would come sliding down the nets with practised aplomb. Besides watching the shimmery river from your bed, one of the delights of Varanasi was watching the place come alive – from your room balcony, from the back lanes, sitting on the ghat steps or from a boat.

“Can you pay cash instead of card?” Mr Talwar broke my reverie and I blinked at him from an old photograph of the Manasarovar Ghat where the property stood – a resplendent red against a spotless sky, a towering enigma, bridging the gap between the living and the heavenly.

“Sorry?” I dumbed out.

“Can you pay cash?” He asked again, this time his eyes made no spectral moves but remained firmly attached to my face.

“No, I can’t, I don’t have enough,” I told him. I needed the liquidity to pay for knick-knacks and street foods from roadside vendors than a top-rated business entity.

Another one whom I assumed to belong to his own mercantile community brought a card machine like an incubus or a temperamental freak show part of a circus which needed close monitoring and frowned at it. No charge. All eyes on me, mine on the wall. 

A little oversight, the stuff of legends – the sunken temple

“Please wait while I charge it,” Mr Talwar said. I didn’t try to cover my exasperation. “Would you like some snacks while we charge it?” A robust attempt at rapprochement.

“Yes, please. Some paneer pakoras would be great.” I really liked them.

Pappu brought a plate of freshly fried paneer pakoras. The gram flour skin crusted into the succulent cheese without demur; it was so delish I asked the mint chutney to be removed from my sight altogether. Pappu stood without eye contact again but sensing my climaxes with pleasure. There was some talk of dragooning out a surcharge, the machine looked ready to serve its merchant clan masters and I had my room.

“Please give me a good rating on wherever you did your reservation from,” Mr Talwar called out after me.

I promised him I would.

For Pappu.

Trouble en route paradise

An array of pyres spewed smoke which I thought didn’t relay any flesh-burning smell. Cans of ghee were upturned over wood stacks about to be set alight by a male relation; females weren’t permitted in these premises of the departed. Brahmans, upper caste Hindu priests, sat in haphazard rows beneath drooping, torn umbrellas, chanting mantras and directing the grieving on ablutionary motions while calling out to those passing by. Business was brisk. Barbers sat on polymeric sheets, dislodging chunks of hair from heads of customers with ustras or folding razors. Our steps were otiose, we were enervated, and not talking to each other as we followed the guide along the ghats. 

The burning ghats – funeral pyres

“Mr Talwar said you wanted a guide who knew Varanasi well,” the guide had introduced himself earlier that day. “I will show you the Varanasi nobody has seen. You can call me Munshi.” Sweeping promises always get my goat and I don’t hide my irritation either. This was my third visit to Varanasi; on both earlier occasions assigned guides had sworn to show me the Aghoris indulging their infamous dietary habits but had chickened out at the last moment. Probably not their fault either – access of late is very hard to come by though I did manage to have a peek with a braver lad, a student of the nearby Banaras Hindu University who also needed the dosh. It is something like a guide in Chhattisgarh offering to take you to a traditional ghotul which is no more – the real ones are either shut down or have removed themselves far from public glare that they smugly take you to a pathetic re-enactment where the performers’ ennui drains you. 

The ‘famous Munna swamy’ supervises work

“Munshi, take us to where the Aghoris do their thing,” I said.

“For that you need to go their ashram,” He replied without missing a beat. “That you can do by yourself in the evening.”

This I knew was a lie – the ashram was as sanitised as they came. It had a brightly coloured central building along Nepali lines, a large pond and a limestone carved human skull that looked like a classroom prop. Except when the top man himself roamed around with his great mastiff, it looked like a campus between recesses.

“Why can’t you take us there?” I insisted, guess more dotage than irritation.

“Didn’t he tell you he can’t?” My friend interjected. “I am sure he has his reasons.”

“I have my reasons too, why don’t you stay out of it?” I snapped. 

Mattamore living

As we walked the labyrinthine lanes, Munshi tried to steer us into shops owned by people he knew from which I veered vehemently away; my friend made it a point to visit a few wasting time. At the ‘burning ghats’ things had deteriorated between us so badly that we didn’t miss an opportunity to yelp at each other. Beneath a ziggurat of steps sat a rotund man overseeing some construction work whom Munshi waved at and introduced to us as ‘the famous Munna swamy.’ While I don’t have a problem with well-fed people, I tend to think of holy men as having more on their minds than eating too much and living statically. Munna looked fatuous to boot ordering around some migrant workers while he himself sat comfortably. So when my friend insisted on giving him money, I blew it. Of course, her money, her wish, I felt like an opinionated cockalorum. Thank you. 

The ghats were chthonian territory with little chambers tucked into that looked like miniature mattamores – each inhabited by a lone sadhu. The three of us walked quietly alongside each other, staring at the viridian blue of the water – refreshingly clean compared to my past visits. Dogs followed us in ludic familiarity over short distances. Munshi had quietly slipped away without our noticing. We sat on the steps silently grateful for the ringing of the bells, slightly muffled by distance, signalling the starting of the Ganga aarti, ritual prayers. Our eyes glued to the faithful in boats goading the helmsmen to row faster so they could have a ringside view from the river.

Gloaming approached and a snow moon rose in the sky cutting a path of argent ripples. More than time what heals is beauty. 

Travel – to see and to be seen

*Most of the names have been changed to protect privacy of actions.

**Varanasi, Banaras and Kashi – all different names of the same place, used interchangeably.