Idling at Ghats of Varanasi

Don’t be surprised by the first word in the heading. Blame its presence, if you will, on the benign effect of Tom Hodgkinson of How to be Idle fame (He runs the show at idler.co.uk). I was an idler long before I associated my mindset and personality traits with those of fellow idlers, Tom included. The ghats of Varanasi were the training ground for the young idler in me, but this post is not about me. It’s about idling at ghats of Varanasi. The old Banarsi (adj. that belonging to Varanasi) culture has both space and respect for idling. There was space devoted for that use and it was known as nichaddam (Sanskrit nishabdam: quiet and calm, a place where one may spend time away from the pressure of the city). Idling was an integral part of the rhythm of a true Banarsi’s life.  

In fact, I can claim with pride that public sphere in the city I grew up in always gave respect to the basic daily human need of idling. Safa-pani (toilet and cleaning clothes and body), bhang ghotai (the elaborate preparation of marijuana leaves paste), thandai (a cold drink spiked with marijuana paste) etc. went hand in hand with nichaddam to make idling a coveted activity. The other bank of the river, along with the deserted areas out of the city’s boundaries, has always been a place where citizens of Varanasi escaped to enjoy the above mentioned activities at their leisurely pace.

Varanasi always had a large proportion of businessmen and service-men in its overall population. That is true even today. An average Banarasi businessman starts his day with an early morning walk to the river, followed by taking a dip in the Holy Ganga, or a swim across the river and back. It is either done alone, or mostly, with a couple of fellow ghat goers.  

 

 

 

 

People Watching in Varanasi: Let the Game Begin

So, you have decided to do it. Then welcome to the heaven of people watchers! Welcome to Varanasi! Let’s start it easy. No specifics for the beginning, only broad outlines of how to do it. 

Whenever you are not solitary, people watching may begin there.

It may begin when you wake up, and end probably with your sleep, or not. If you are a lucid dreamer, then you may remember and extended the activity into your dreams.

The City of Temples wakes up in installments. There are pockets of this oldest living city that are known by the name of main deity of the locality. Some of these pockets are called sections (khandas) and few others circuits. So, wherever you are, ask a local a couple of questions:

Which Khanda is this (to take you to the next question)?                                                    How far from my place of stay is the temple of the presiding deity of the khanda (if it’s over a mile, then ask just about the most popular temple of the locality)? 

The answer to these questions will direct you towards the point you may like to reach before the first rays of the rising sun reach there. One important point to remember here: try to reach there through the lanes of Varanasi. On second thought, you may actually forget that point, because you cannot reach the core of any khanda without cutting through the network of lanes that the old city is. 

A Lane of Varanasi near Kedareshwar Temple: Half-an-Hour Before Dawn

Now, when you have already started walking, yes, it has to be walking for two reasons. The first reason is that the beginners’ people watching, like the beginners’ archery, is done best when the observer is stationary. It’s only the advanced shooters/watchers who can manage movement along with the activity. The second reason is that in the lanes of Varanasi, in many, if not most of them, it’s difficult to ride anything faster than a bicycle, and impossible to bring even an auto-rickshaw.

So, as you have already started walking in the lane, I congratulate you. You have already become a potential people watcher in Varanasi. Look around you, even if it’s still dark and a couple of yellow lights illumine the darkness only directly under the poles on which they are fixed, and weakly. You will see a couple of devotees walking towards the river. Which river?

The Vision of the Holy Ganga Waking with the Rising Sun

Oh people watcher, I’m sorry! I forgot to mention the greatest and the surest landmark in the whole old quarters (pakki mahaal) of the City of Lights. I forgot to bow to the life line of the city, its mother and the holiest of all Indian Rivers: Mother Ganga (atlases call her the Ganges). The lanes and ghats (the stone steps that lead to the river) are the two places where most of the people watching will be accomplished in Varanasi. I am biased towards the old city and the old city (I risk over-simplification here) is lanes and ghats.

Modern urban centres in India, at least the ones I have been to, (no knowledge of other countries, not a single stamp on my visa, never used my passport) have one definite tendency: they are homogeneous in many ways. If there’s an old city and a new city, then the new city will have features like malls, metro-rail, broad streets, skyscrapers (or aspiring skyscrapers), set routine of people’s daily life etc. The new city in Varanasi is not much different. Yes, it does not have any bona fide skyscraper yet, and the plan of metro is still in the incubation stage, but it is like any other modern city of India. Therefore, there’s no need for anyone to spend money and time and reach Varanasi, only to see what can be seen in their own city. The essence of the city is in the old quarters, or the old city.      

The River Flows through Life in the City

As the sun rays bathe the river in their glory and the river rises, the city rises, and with the city rise the citizens, or those who were not awake already. What you have to do is to find the exact time of sunrise from any local newspaper or news channel and then, reach the bank of the river at least fifteen minutes before that. No, these fifteen minutes, and the fifteen minutes after the sun rises are not for people watching. In the fifteen minutes before the sun rises you must find a spot that is neither deserted nor overcrowded. Once you’ve found that spot, occupy it and look towards the other bank across the river. That’s east, and the little crimson disk of a sun peeks tentatively from there every morning, morning after morning. Behold the miracle of the rays of crimson raining on the rippling crimson mirror that flows calmly on, and then witness both turn golden and then yellow within the span of fifteen minutes. 

Once you have soaked in the warmth of the sun, it’s the time for you to watch people. As you have no set targets and no pressing demands over your time (the two prerequisites of successful people watching) look around, ahead and behind you. You will see a veritable cornucopia of human existence. Let the game begin!

People Watching in Varanasi 2

Let’s move from people watching in the past to that in the present time, and from that in books to that in life.

It’s important for a people watcher to always remember that it is an art, not a science. Yet, there are certain pointers that may be helpful for doing it safely and satisfactorily in Varanasi. It’s not participant observation of Anthropology and Social Psychology. It’s closer to a kind of modified flânerie.

• Camouflage for people watching: That becomes difficult if you are racially different. Even for those who look like the people they want to watch in Varanasi, there’s a tip. Dress like an average Banarsi. How to do that? Observe keenly for a day or two, and then choose wisely from what you have brought. Camouflage well because an observer cannot afford to attract observers to himself. 
• Don’t follow schedules: People watching is very much like drifting, the only difference is that it has one definite goal. As there’s nowhere you want to reach, no circuit or path to follow, only a goal, i.e. observing those around you, just imbibe the plethora of perceptions around you. 
• Lose your camera: Camera is a bane for people watchers (and a boon for street photographers). The moment your camera becomes visible, you declare your outsider/observer status. That makes your ‘subject’ conscious of your presence and even behave artificially, posing for the camera. Moreover, a camera makes quiet and focussed observation impossible. So, at least for the first few days, just don’t carry it along.  

People Watching in Varanasi 1

What is people watching?

Well, Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines it as “the act of spending time looking at different kinds of people in a public place because you find this interesting”.

 

I stumbled upon this long-known, but undiscovered term through a friend’s mail about his indulging into the activity in his visit to a country in South-East Asia. I was acquainted with flânerie and drifting due to my interest in psychogeography, Baudelaire and the Arcades Project, but not with the new rage of the new age. I researched a little and reached to the link between flânerie and people watching. An article I particularly  liked was about people watching in Paris.  

Not only was I excited as I read more about it, I could actually see how visitors to my city have been people watching since they started visiting it. From Ralph Fitch, Tavernier and Bernier to Pierre Loti and Hermann Keyserling, visitors to the city wrote paragraph after wonderful paragraph of description that amounts to the central activity of people watching much before the term was used and acknowledged.

Here’s an example from a work of non-fiction from early twentieth century, from E. B. Havell’s Benares: The Sacred City:

It is amusing to see sometimes at Mogul Serai, the junction for the East Indian line, how the up-to-date Indian arriving from Calcutta, Bombay, or some other large Anglo-Indian city, will in an incredibly short time divest himself of his European environment and transform himself into the orthodox Hindu. You will see him first stepping out of the train, dressed in more or less correct European garb, and smoking a cigarette. He is accompanied by a servant, who deposits a steel trunk on the platform in front of him. Then, coram populo, but without the least suggestion of impropriety, he proceeds to take off coat, waistcoat, trousers, and boots, and taking out of the trunk a collection of spotless white drapery, speedily arrays himself in puggaree, dhotee, and the rest of the becoming costume of an Indian gentleman, while the cast-off garments are stowed away until his next return to European society.

Pierre Loti’s India is full of such examples. This one is from the beginning of his visit:

A young fakir, whose long hair falls upon his shoulders, stands by the abode of the dead in a rigid attitude, with his head turned towards the smoking heaps of wood and their gruesome burdens. Though covered with white dust he is still beautiful and muscular. His chest is decked with a garland of marigolds, such a garland as the people here cast upon the river’s breast. A little way above the funeral heaps some five or six persons crouch upon the frieze of an old palace, which fell into the river long ago. Their heads are wrapped in veils, and, like the fakir, they stare fixedly at their kinsman who is being burned.

Here’s another example of people watching, this time, from fiction, from Shivprasaad Singh’s Gali Age Mudti Hai (The Lane Turns Ahead):

 [Varanasi] is a strange city. There’s not enough space to walk in the lanes, not enough even to pass if one person stops walking, yet, if a performer starts performing, people forget all work and problems and assemble to watch what he has to show…

Two mahuar players were competing against each other: moving in circles, challenging, taking stances with mouth full of air. They appeared to be from Rajasthan. They wore narrow cut, tight trousers and dirty vests. Both wore patterned headgear. One was young and the other older… They played the same tune from a very famous Hindi film, “Mann dole, mere tan dole…”. 

The novel presents many paragraphs of equally rich description as the hero goes on his way and watches people.

In addition to modern English and Hindi prose, people watching is ever present, in one form or the other but not as the central concern of the piece, in Sanskrit writing on the city. 

1984 to 2002: Congress to BJP

“Change is the only unchangeable law of nature”, said Paracelsus (or was it someone else?). Well, we have evidences to prove otherwise (about change), at least in India.

What are the things that do not change in our great country? The way the police force operates across the length of space and through the expanse of time, for one. The police-politician-criminal nexus’s working more efficiently and effectively than any other system in times of emergency, which, ironically, is created by them. The media forgetting very conveniently and completely, and within the span of less than five days, once such an incident is over, everything about what once made to the top of the front page. The speed of light is nothing in comparison to the pace of disappearance of events from the collective memory of us, the people of India.

So, who remembers? Generally those directly affected.

And who are affected directly by an event?

Well, those who have lost someone they loved.

And those who connect with those who have lost.

I belong to the second category, and as my connection with the victims is not emotional, but rational (I have rationally explained that to myself n number of times, yet there remains suspicion in my mind on that point), I don’t and won’t forget 1984, and 2002 and 1979 and 1947, when I was not even born. I won’t forget all those other events, in which the system failed, and the common man’s (and woman’s, and child’s) life was lost. There’s a point to be made here about the rationality of me as a common man. When a resident of the Widow Colony at Tilak Vihar, New Delhi wants that a person sentenced to life-imprisonment for his role in the genocide of 1984 is given capital punishment as, “he can meet his family, his children… [but she] can’t meet [her] husband, [her] children can’t meet their father because he killed them”, although I know so many points against capital punishment, I somehow find myself accepting her logic here (TOI December 18, 2018 page 7).

I know how unhealthy it is to think low of basic human nature. I also know that my study of history makes me think very low of basic human nature. What else can I think of it after all those great wars and crusades and genocides and riots and many other ways in which human beings show their true nature time and time again. This post is about events that were once called communal riots and then were shown to be genocides. As justice denied (as it was delayed) in case of the Sikh Genocide of 1984, coming to the front page of Indian newspapers on 18 December 2018 became the immediate cause for my posting this here, 1984 is mentioned in the title. As it’s connected with 2002 Gujarat Genocide, and many more such massacres and genocides, the title mentions that year too. As the parties in power for most part of India’s political history have been Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), their names naturally appear there.

Let’s begin with the 1984 Sikh Genocide that was justified by the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi in a public speech in the same year. As this post is more about future and less about the past, it’ll focus less on what happened and more on what can be done to save India from a repeat of such events in future. I covered the genocide in:

Justice Denied (Probably) Forever, not just Delayed: The November 1984 Sikh Genocide

The report of the Nanavati Commission of Inquiry on the 1984 Sikh Genocide (then called Riots) clearly records:

[The members of the Police force were either] negligent in performance of their duties or… they had directly or indirectly helped the mobs in their violent attacks on the Sikhs.

The Commission would however, like to recommend that such riots are kept under check and control and there should be an independent police force which is free from the political influence and which is well equipped to take immediate and effective action. It is also necessary and therefore, the Commission recommends that if riots takes place on a big scale and if the police is not able to register every offence separately at the time when they are reported, the Government should thereafter at the earliest take steps to see that all complaints are properly recorded and that they are investigated by independent Investigating Officers. Only if such an action is taken by the Government, people would feel that law is allowed to take its own course and the guilty would be punished properly.

As the Times of India reports, the Delhi High Court said it clearly that the police “indeed turned a blind eye and blatantly abetted crimes committed by the rioting mob”. It also blamed the police of “active connivance” in the crimes.

History repeated itself many a time in smaller measures before the next watershed: 2002. Thousands were brutally murdered in Gujarat, and the modus operandi was similar.  

WE HAVE NO ORDERS TO SAVE YOU, a report of Human Rights Watch on ‘State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat’ (3 April 2002, Vol. 14, No. 3 (C)) the failure of state was highlighted once more:

In light of the state government’s own admission that Gujarat witnessed over 443 “communal incidents” between 1970 and 2002, the commission faults the state government for a “failure of intelligence and action” with regard to the events “leading to the Godhra tragedy and the subsequent death and destruction that occurred.”

The time span mentioned above covers the state governments led by a Chief Minister of Congress, and later of BJP. The same report mentions another report, of National Human Rights Commission, that notes “with concern that police in Gujarat were constrained in performing their duty to quell communal violence… organized mobs ‘armed with cell phones and address’ sometimes singled out persons and property for destruction ‘within view of police stations and personnel’.

Witness after witness testified that “FIRs were being ‘distorted or poorly recorded’ and that ‘senior political personalities’ sought to ‘influence’ investigations”.

NHRC recommended Police Reform:

The Commission is of the view that recent events in Gujarat and, indeed, in other States of the country, underline the need to proceed without delay to implement the reforms that have already been recommended in order to preserve the integrity of the investigating process and to insulate it from extraneous influences.

Be it 1984 or 2002, one thing is clear, thousands of persons cannot be butchered selectively until the state and the state security forces are not complicit in the act. Their constitutional role and responsibility and their moral and sacred trust is to give their lives to save those under their protection. They choose not to perform their constitutional, moral and sacred duty. They are guilty and responsible for the loss of all those innocent lives and in a just universe, they’ll pay. That seldom happens in India, and when it does, it happens so rarely that it becomes a front page, several column wide news.  

Varanasi Flyover Collapse, 15 May 2018: Seven Months Later

Seven months sounds like ‘a very long time ago’, when it’s used in context of the loss of several innocent lives due to criminal neglect of duty by few.

Exactly seven months ago, one summer evening, that felt just like the evening before it, a girder from a flyover that was under construction fell down and crushed many vehicles. Many persons died.  I wrote a detailed blog on the actual number of deaths, as against the numbers given by the government. In that blog I presented external evidence with claims:

Report that up to 50 persons were crushed to death including 1 Roadways bus, 1 minibus, 4 cars, 2 autos and bikes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP2mNRu7Wcc

Report that more than 50 persons died.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucZnk7eQjXI

Shows clearly the number of cars, few with people inside.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpIrBtW1Uwo

I also added details to the data government had given (https://rajnishmishravns.wordpress.com/2018/05/29/varanasi-flyover-collapse-15-may-2018-0540-pm-after-a-fortnight/). 

The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh ordered proceedings for strict penal action against the following:

S No	Name	Designation
1	Mr Rajan Mittal	MD, UP Bridge Corporation
2	Mr. Harish Chandra Tiwari	Chief Project Manager (Pratapgarh Distt.)
3	Mr. Kuljas Rai Sudan	Project Manager (Meerut Distt.)
4	Mr. Rajendra Singh	Assistant Engineer-Civil (Mirzapur Distt.)
5	Mr. Lal Chandra Singh	Engineer (Chandauli Distt.)
6	Mr. Rajesh Pal Singh	Junior Engineer- Civil/Safety (Ghazipur Distt.)
7	Mr. Genda Lal	The former Project Manager (Aligarh Distt.)

On 28 July 2018 on the basis of the report sent by CBRI (Central Building Research Institute) that mentioned “engineering errors and irregularities in construction methodology” and also as other evidences pointed towards them, the Crime Branch of Police arrested all those in the list above, barring Mr Rajan Mittal. In addition to them, it also arrested Assistant Engineer (Mechanical Safety) Ramtapasya Singh Yadav (Lucknow) and Contractor Saheb Hussain (Siwan). The TOI report gives the details of charges:

IPC Sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder)  308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide) 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees) 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention); and Sections 3&4 of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/varanasi-flyover-collapse-case-upbc-engineers-contractor-among-8-arrested/articleshow/65177179.cms

On 13 August 2018 their bail plea was rejected. 

It’s been four months and two days since that day, and google could not find any report on any kind of development in the case. So, seven months and few hours later, the victims of that tragic(for them) mishap due to at least criminal negligence of duty on the part of those arrested have not received justice.

In the end let’s remember the victims once more. About their exact number, even TOI is not very sure, as it gives their number as 19 in July and 15 in its August report from which I have used data above. Whatever their official number is, have even they received the compensation promised? Is that all or the governments, both state and central, will come to the aid of their families in future too? 

I think that media must start a tradition of following up cases, long after they stop being “hot” and lose the shock value they had when they were “news”.

 

2019, Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party

At an evening adda today, a harmless and nearly non-committal comment of mine became the launch pad for a debate that raged over an hour and engulfed a couple of passerby’s into it. I reached the adda and the two persons already present there remarked about how the recent elections in the state assemblies went against the BJP. Beginning with the qualifier: “I am not a supporter of BJP myself,” I added that even if the voters chose to go en masse against the incumbent government, they simply couldn’t vote for a diseased and int/fernally weak Congress. My remark was strongly objected to and they asked me to either prove my point (or, as their eyes spoke, apologize). As I was in no mood to apologize, I simply went on to prove what I thought was obvious. I told them about the traditional and consistent hero-worship of post-independence Congress. I also reminded them of the serious charges of corruption and more leveled against the Congress Prime Ministers Mrs. Indira Gandhi and Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, and of the reports of property of Mr. Gandhi and Mrs. Sonia Gandhi stashed in foreign accounts. I added to that the much publicized and known ineptness of (or, as they’d prefer it to be put, plain bad luck of) Mr. Rahul Gandhi. I was exulting and congratulating myself by the end of my part of the speech, as I was sure I had proven my case. Alas, how wrong I was!

My friends demanded for concrete evidence for the Gandhis’s black money stashed in foreign accounts. As I was not prepared with exact names and sources, I requested them to give me one day for research. Then they began with their praise of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. I countered them with the magical and self-explanatory points: the 1984 Sikh Massacre, Operation Blue Star, 1975, the Emergency and Allahabad High Court’s verdict on Mrs. Gandhi’s use of unfair means in election. I even mentioned the Nellie Massacre and Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s response to it to make my case strong. Their response to it was similar to that of Mrs. Gandhi’s response to Nellie (“One has to let such events take their course before stepping in,” <https://scroll.in/article/829682/why-was-assams-nellie-massacre-of-1983-not-prevented-despite-intimations-of-violence>) and to Mr. Gandhi’s response to October-November 1984. They said that the Congress ought to be praised for containing the possible damage by limiting the number of casualties at around three thousand only. They said that when a leader like Mrs. Gandhi is assassinated, the expected spontaneous public reaction is what was observed in 1984. When I countered that with the proven role of Congress leaders in the massacre, and with the recorded eye-witness accounts naming Mr. Sajjan Kumar, Mr Jagdish Tytler, and Mr. Kamal Nath along with other notable Congress party members as the leaders of blood-thirsty hound packs, they simply glided over it with the claim that Mr. Rajiv Gandhi had nothing to do with it. I reminded them of his (in) famous “Once a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it shakes” speech, and they completely agreed with the sentiments expressed there. I told them that out of the three days of massacre in Delhi, Mr. Gandhi was at the helm for two and had the moral responsibility to stop it. My friends would not listen to anything like that. I then lamented that they did not even properly accept the responsibility of their family (dynasty) in whatever happened till date, neither did they fully and formally apologized to the Sikh community. Mrs. Gandhi did that in an oblique manner <http://m.rediff.com/news/1998/jan/27sorry.htm&gt; and her son once reused to do so <https://www.indiatoday.in/india/north/story/rahul-gandhi-interview-modi-gujarat-behind-2002-riots-congress-tried-to-stop-killing-in-1984-riots-178614-2014-01-27&gt; and then did it half-heartedly and for damage control later <https://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/i-share-pm-sonia-gandhis-apology-over-1984-riots-rahul-gandhi/&gt; To that the rejoinder was that Mr. Rajiv Gandhi had done that way back in 1985 in the Longowal Accord. I searched for the text of the accord and discovered that there was no mention of Mr. Gandhi apologizing there <http://www.sikhtimes.com/doc_072485a.html&gt;.

About the charge of corruption against the three senior Gandhis, I reached the archived page of Swiss Magazine Schweizer Illustriertein from 1991 and found Mr. Gandhi in the list, along with Idi Amin, Saddam Hussaien, Suharto and Abu Nidal. Although with his 2.5 billion Swiss Francs he is definitely at the end of the list and is an angel when compared to the God of Corrupt Politicians of the time, Mr. Amin with over 500 times that amount. Such a charge went unchallenged and the powerful members of the Gandhi clan chose not to sue the magazine, may be taken as a weak indicator of its veracity. Although it must be admitted that a magazine’s article is no conclusive evidence. The same is true about Mrs. Sonia Gandhi’s net worth, not as she declared in India, but as was put in the Huffington Post, coming from < https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-politicians/presidents/sonia-gandhi-net-worth/ >. Even that does not prove the charge conclusively. So, I humbly take back the old charges of corruption from the public sphere of my discourse, although my stubborn memory refuses to erase it and my mind has long accepted the charges as true in the private sphere.

My claim of corruption (if electoral malpractice and misuse of power are covered loosely by the term) against Mrs. Indira Gandhi was undeniable <https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/the-court-verdict-that-prompted-indira-gandhi-to-declare-emergency/story-uaDsy0j3B0vSdiPn2md9WO.html&gt;, so my friends called Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha, the man many Indians and I respect for his integrity and courage, a RSS-BJP sympathizer. Thus they questioned the integrity of that individual and also of the whole Indian Judiciary.  That person has passed away, and I feel honour-bound to linger here a little to make a point supporting him. A former Law Minister and his personal acquaintance spoke in glowing terms about Justice Sinha:

“Justice Sinha was a very able honest and God fearing judge. Before the judgment an attempt was made to influence him by the then Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court D S Mathur who visited him at his residence along with his wife for the first and only one time to convey to him that he had been informed by Dr Mathur who was related to him and was the personal physician of Mrs Gandhi that she had decided to elevate Justice Sinha to the Supreme Court after he had decided the case. However Justice Sinha’s strong conscience did not permit him to take the bait. This was conveyed to me long after the judgment by Justice Sinha himself when we both were playing golf in Allahabad… His judgment was unassailable and Mrs Gandhi had to change the law retrospectively to get over his judgment. His judgment was hailed all over the democratic world as a great triumph of an independent judiciary in India” (Quoted in https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/the-court-verdict-that-prompted-indira-gandhi-to-declare-emergency/story-uaDsy0j3B0vSdiPn2md9WO.html). 

‘He also declined the offer Shanti Bhushan made, as Law Minister in 1977, to transfer him to the Himachal Pradesh High Court “so that he could get elevated as Chief Justice when a vacancy arose”. ‘ (https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl2508/stories/20080425250808200.htm)

The Rhythm of Life in Kashi

An hour before sunrise deep within the labyrinth of lanes near Kedareshwar Temple and Ghat, the movements of life start to register their presence. Although the lane had not gone to sleep before one very late at night, it started stirring by four in the morning. It leads to the temple of the central deity of the section, Lord Kedareshwar. Devotees of Lord Kedara and of Mother Ganga are men and women of confirmed habits. Change in seasons affects the rhythm of the life of the regulars only a little bit. They move through the same lanes to complete the same circuit with a constant rhythm throughout their life. Nothing can alter that, be it of personal, local, regional, national or international consequence. Life comes back to its norm-al self with a certainty that would make the poet who wrote the following lines proud:

Happy the man, whose wish and care 

   A few paternal acres bound, 

Content to breathe his native air, 

                            In his own ground. 

…

Blest, who can unconcernedly find 

   Hours, days, and years slide soft away, 

In health of body, peace of mind, 

                            Quiet by day, 

Sound sleep by night; study and ease, 

   Together mixed; sweet recreation; 

And innocence, which most does please, 

                            With meditation. 

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; 

   Thus unlamented let me die; 

Steal from the world, and not a stone 

                            Tell where I lie.

(From “Ode on Solitude” by A Pope)